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ENTRANCE to SALCO'MBE ABOVE WOODVILLE 



^LUelt 



MYRTLES AND ALOES; 



OR, 



®m Mtamfa Sktr|j *§aah 



BY ELLEN LUSCOMBE. 



WITH SOME ADDENDA IN THE SHAPE OF 



A DISCUESIYE GOSSIP ABOUT KHfGSBRIDGE. 



BY FRANCIS YOUNG. 



Walking as of old we walked 



Beside the river's wooded reach, 

The fortress, and the mountain ridge, 
The cataract flashing from the bridge, 

The breaker breaking on the beach." 

*,■,„,,» In Memoriam. 



KINGSBRLDGE : 

G. P. FRIEND, GAZETTE OFFICE, FORE STREET. 

LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. 



MDCCCLXI. 



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PREFACE. 



It appears hardly necessary to say anything by way of 
introduction to so small a work as the present ; but it 
may be remarked that the pages which trSt of Salcombe 
and its vicinity were written at the suggestion of the 
two young ladies whose friendship holds so pleasing a 
place in the remembrance of our stay in Devonshire, 
and that those which tell the tale of Kingsbridge were 
written by Mr. Young at the request of the Publisher. 

The drawings illustrating the scenery of Kingsbridge 
were made by Miss Tregelles, of the latter place, 
whilst for those of Salcombe the Author alone must be 
responsible. 

June, 1861. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



ENTRANCE TO SALCOMBE ABOVE WOODVILLE 
SALCOMBE CHURCH .... 

WOODVILLE 

SALCOMBE HAEBOUB LOOKING SEAWAEDS 

TOECEOSS 

VIEW EEOM MOUNT KNOWLE 

SALCOMBE EEOM LOED COUETENAY's WALE! 

THE MOULT 

BINGEONE 

KINGSBEIDGE EEOM POETLEMOUTH 

EEOM THE PLYMOUTH EOAD 

FEOM TACKET WOOD 



Frontispiece. 
To face page g 



11 

59 t 
59 
77 * 
88 * 
88 ' 

110 

110 

118 4 





ERRATA. 






Page 18, line 18. 


For Fushcias 


read 


Fuchsias. 


— 32, — 4. 


For Pycnophyeus 


jj 


Pycnophyeus. 


— 40, — 81. 


For Acliantum 


j> 


Adiantuui, 


— 54, — 1. 


For Grlacex 


» 


Glaux. 


— 57, — 24. 


For Dadder 


» 


Dodder. 


— 72, — 6. 


For Ram?oms 


3J 


Ramsons. 


— 93, — 22. 


For Phyllirea 


» 


Phyllyrea.. 



CONTENTS. 

SALCOMBE. 
CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 
SALCOMBE 1 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CASTLE 11 

CHAPTER III. 

THE INHABITANTS 14 

CHAPTER IV. 

A NEW STUDY , . . . . 24 

CHAPTER V. 

BOCK POOLS 31 

CHAPTER VI. 

DAFFODILS 36 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE BEBECCA 46 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE WBECK 53 

CHAPTER IX. 

TOECEOSS 59 

CHAPTER X. 

THE SPBING. SEWEE MILL SANDS. 70 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

LORD COURTENAY'S WALK . . . ... 

CHAPTER XII. 

SPLAT COVE 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE MOULT 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE LAUNCH 

CHAPTER XV. 

RICKHAM STATION 

CHAPTER XVI. 

CONCLUSION 

CHAPTER I. 

A BOUND-ABOUT CHAPTER 

CHAPTER II. 

ME. NOTEWORTHY' S CORNER 

CHAPTER III. 

OLLA PODRLDA 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 



CHAPTER I. 

SALCOMBE. 

" Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bliib'n ? 
In dunk'ln Laub die gold Orangen gliih'n : 
Ein sanfter Wind vo'ra blauen Himmel weht 
Die Myrte still ; und hoch der Lorbeer steht ! " 



Goethe. 



"Salcombe! Where is Salcombe?" says one of my readers. 
" ! " rejoins a second, u I dare say it is one of those places 
which was never heard of till a railway came through it, and now 
the inhabitants are so proud that they must have a book all about 
themselves ! " "I know/' says a third ; " it is the name of a 
large hill just beyond Sid mouth, which we used to climb on pic- 
nic excursions, and which, after all, never appeared to such 
advantage as when we were at its base ! " 

No, my readers; you are all wrong. My Salcombe is much 
lower down in the map, and there is no railway to it at all. Look 
at the southernmost part of the county of Devon, and you will 
see a sort of lake, not unlike a splash on a tea tray, or at all 
events, which can be made like it, if you are artistically inclined. 
At the top of it you will see the town of Kingsbridge, and at the 
bottom you will not see, unless your map is a very good one, the 

B 



» MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

thriving little town, or rather semi-town, of Salcombe, which is 
to be the scene of our adventures. Had any one told me a few 
years before that I should ever find myself there, I should have 
looked on the prophecy as altogether apocryphal ; but events did 
conspire to bring my husband and myself thither for a period; 
and this is how it came about. 

In the autumn of 1854, during a visit to our relatives in 
Dublin, it was considered necessary for me to seek a warmer 
climate for the winter; and circumstances with which I need not 
here trouble my readers took us to the spot which, of all others 
in England, is supposed to be the best suited to a person suffering 
from a bronchial affection. I need not weary my readers with the 
oft-told tale of sea-sickness and other marine discomforts between 
Kingstown and Holyhead, excepting to remark that the weather, 
which had been for months very fine, suddenly changed about the 
time of our departure, and we had, in consequence, as unpleasant 
a crossing as most people meet with. We slept the first night at 
Birmingham, and after another day's journey, found ourselves at 
the Kingsbridge Road Station on the South Devon Railway* 

Now began the only unpleasant part of the land journey. The 
coach in which we were to travel was heavily loaded, and the 
extremely hilly nature of the road added to the fast approaching 
darkness, I confess, made me rather nervous. However, it is 
always well not to seem afraid, so I kept my terrors to myself, 
until after a drive of ten miles we reached, quite in the dark, the 
town of Kingsbridge. Here we had to change into a fly, which 
we shared with two captains' wives, who had been respectively to 
Liverpool and Cardiff, to take leave of their husbands, and a little 
boy, who told me that he had once been in his father's schooner 
to " Ale/' which, after some perseverance, I discovered to mean 
Hayle on the Cornish coast. I endeavoured to glean what in- 
formation I could from my fellow travellers as to the sort of place 
which Salcombe might prove ; and I learned that if not a " city 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 6 

of kings/' it was at least a " town of lords." Two Lords and an 
Honorable were mentioned as having houses there ; so we imme- 
diately conjectured, in spite of what we had previously heard, that 
Salcombe must be a distingue place. 

At length, after much ascending and descending of hills, which 
gave one a lively notion of going upstairs and downstairs in a 
sedan chair, we reached the house in which lodgings had been 
taken for us, and having, in order to facilitate the unloading of 
the vehicle, put out the little boy first, we were greeted by the 
long and surprised face of our future landlady, and the excla- 
mation — " A little boy ! I never heard there was a little boy ! " 
She was, however, appeased by my protestations that the little 
stranger, who was so unwelcome, was none of ours, but she was 
evidently not cmite comfortable until he was safely deposited in the 
fly which was to take his mother and her friend to the further end 
of the town. The blazing fire and clean apartments looked com- 
fortable enough after our two days' journey ; and we retired, 
thankful to Him who had protected us throughout, and rather 
impatient to see what should greet our eyes on the morrow. 

It was on the 18th of November, before seven o'clock in the 
morning, that we arose to look out of the window, and thus gain 
some notion of the place on which we had alighted. Do not be 
disappointed, nor take a dislike to my book, when I tell you that 
it was the dreariest prospect my eyes ever beheld. Dull, cloudy 
weather to begin with — a large sort of salt water lake lay stretched 
before us, from the sides of which the tide had receded, and left 
the most filthy mud, with boats and anchors set fast in all positions, 
as if they had been bemired there on their return from a drunken 
frolic. A ship yard exactly under our house, from which it was 
divided only by a very narrow street and low wall, containing an 
unfinished vessel, gave promise of abundance of noise as soon as 
the carpenters should be sufficiently awake to make it. A few 
gray sea gulls and black shags were the only living creatures to be 



4? MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

seen, and they were evidently making the best of their time before 
the rest of the world was stirring. Everything seemed to be 

" Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapoury breath of the east wind." 

Things looking so unpromising did not conduce to early rising, 
so we shrunk back, and strove to dissipate the unpleasant im- 
pression which we had received. 

The promise of carpenters' rappings, which had been given to 
the eye was not " cheated to the sense i" the noise made by their 
industry soon rendered further repose out of the question; for 
now 

" Throughout the ship yard's hounds, 
Were heard the intermingled sounds 
Of axes and of mallets, plied 
With vigorous arms on every side ; " 

and all this long before it was fairly daylight. 

The morning proved one of those slate-coloured, pepper-and- 
salt days, with which we, in this island home of ours, are so 
frequently favoured. Nevertheless, we took a survey of the place, 
and unpromising enough it appeared. 

The town seemed to be a mere cul de sac, and to end in 
nothing; but by dint of perseverance we discovered a walking- 
way to a piece of land which appeared to have been reclaimed 
from the mud by some sort of Dutch process, and to have acquired 
some dwelling-houses on it. But how they came there was a 
mystery, for all business looked as if transacted by means of 
donkeys and boats. This place we afterwards learned was called 
The Island. 

There was in the aforementioned street a regular stone staircase 
leading to the top of the cliff, on which other houses were built, 
thus enjoying the ascending smoke from their lower neighbours 
in great perfection. Donkeys went up this Via Mala so quietly 
that it was evident they were used to it ; and, indeed, the loads 
which these patient creatures carried on their wooden saddles 
were astonishing. Following their lead, we reached the Post 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 5 

Office, which contained nothing worthy of notice save two troughs 
of very promising-looking auriculas, for which I observed the 
situation was remarkably favourable. 

From the Post Office we found our way to the Church, which 
was to be my husband's charge, and were agreeably surprised to 
find it newly built of white brick and stone, and the churchyard 
planted with aloes and yuccas, (the largest I had then ever seen) 
myrtles, and a great deal of the thick-leaved Chinese Veronica, 
which flourishes profusely in this almost frostless climate. We 
returned by another way to our lodgings, and both agreed in 
the opinion that Salcombe was, in spite of all that had been said 
in its favour, the most unprepossessing place we had ever seen. 
Still I admit there was something about the greenish gray colour 
of the stones and fern-grown walls which pleased my eye, and 
which I expected would tell well in a brighter atmosphere. In 
the afternoon we again sallied forth, and took the road by which 
we had entered from Kingsbridge, and after a long walk between 
walls and high banks, emerged suddenly into a more open space, 
and for the first time beheld the open sea, or at least as much of 
it as can be seen between the two prominent bluffs which form 
the mouth of the harbour. 

■**■■*# 

I am not to be understood as usurping the office of the Guide 
Book makers, whose inflated descriptions amuse us all so much; 
nor have I any vested interest in Salcombe, beyond what every 
lover of the picturesque may legitimately feel; but I will attempt 
to put my readers in the possession of a few facts to start with. 

Salcombe, then, is built on the western side of what appears to 
be a wide river, but which is in reality an arm of the sea, enclosed 
on both sides by lofty hills, but which, after having been confined 
in this way for about a mile and a half, expands itself into an 
estuary, running up to Kingsbridge and branching off in various 



6 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

directions ; thus justifying the simile of the splash of water which 
I used just now. The town being little more than the width of 
one street, with a few narrow yards running out of it, occupies a 
long front, curving a little backwards at the eastern end. A 
person entering by a boat from the sea would think there was not 
much of it, but viewed from one of the creeks which run into 
the country towards the north-east the appearance is far more 
imposing ; and I am told by a clergyman resident on the opposite 
side, who in his youth assisted at the bombardment of Algiers, 
that the town always reminded him of that place; and I can 
imagine that when seen through some of those rolling banks of fog 
w r hich we had once an opportunity of witnessing, the resemblance 
must have been complete; for it certainly presented one of the 
most curious effects I ever beheld, in some degree reconciling 
one to that most unpleasant aspect of Nature. This likeness to 
Algiers receives strong confirmation from a drawing in a little 
work which has been lately published by the Eev. E. Davies, 
which struck me as soon as I looked at it. 

There is nothing to interest the professed antiquary, save the 
Old Castle at the entrance of the harbour, which will hereafter be 
described. The real interest which Salcombe possesses is for the 
marine naturalist, the botanist, the artist, and the general lover of 
Nature under all her aspects. Such will not regret the absence 
of the esplanade, the pier, and the band, which form the staple of 
most sea-side watering places. No " Prospect Places," which, I 
observe, are invariably opposite a dead wall ; no " Bay View " nor 
u Sea Yiew Avenues," which behold nothing but their opposite 
neighbours, as in the outskirts of Dublin ; no white and dazzling 
terraces, with stone steps and green verandahs, announce the 
names of the builders, contractors, or lords of the soil, and set 
one upon searching the Eed Book for information as to who's who; 
though, by the way, some curious little scraps of information are 
sometimes thereby elicited. No, there are none of these; but 



MYRTLES AKD ALOES. 7 

instead — and, to my mind, it is a most advantageous exchange — 
bold and overhanging rocks for those who love the magnificent, 
and sheltered lanes and green nooks for those who prefer the 
shady side. The Devonshire wells have always been a subject of 
admiration to the artistic observer, and justly so, for they form 
beautiful backgrounds to many a scene of rural courtship or 
merry-making, and, I suspect, have been innocent causes of many 
a match in humble life ; whilst those who have stumbled upon 
them in the midst of a long dusty walk can speak feelingly of the 
refreshment and comfort which they afford. There was one of 
these, though by no means the prettiest I have seen, near 
Woodville, a short distance from the town, to which the beautiful 
inscription in Lalla Eookh, " Many like me have viewed this 
fountain ; but they are gone, and their eyes have closed for ever," 
was strikingly applicable ; for this little stream must have seen 
generation after generation pass away without any sensible differ- 
ence to itself, still singing the same song, 

" Men may come and men may go, 

But I flow on for ever ! " 

On the opposite side of the road was a deep ravine extending 
to the sea, watered at the top by the same spring, and clothed 
with ferns (the hart's tongue and male fern particularly, which 
were green throughout the whole winter), which always attracted 
us by its brilliant contrast with the brown rocks, and bare stems 
of the trees, and the glassy waves at the bottom. On such a gray 
day as I have described it was peculiarly charming, and almost 
deluded us into the belief that spring was nearer at hand than our 
almanacs would have us believe. 

Lofty hills, crowned in many places by fir plantations, rise 
from the back of the town, affording lovely prospects of sea and 
land. The various branches of the estuary can be seen in many 
places extending almost to their termination, which used to 
remind us of the plans of the country around Sebastopol, which 



8 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

were in everybody's hands at that time, ami studied with such 
tender interest by all who had loved ones suffering under its waUs, 
or, perhaps, dying without the consolation of beholding the dear 
familiar faces of their youth. No feeling heart could be indiffer- 
ent to the sufferings of our soldiers at that sad period ; and many 
a careless one who would not pray for himself would join earnestly 
in the petitions offered up for them. The interest excited on 
their behalf was universal, and we used to be asked in our walks 
into the country, by the villagers, if there was any news of the 
war; and on our replying that the prospect of the capture of 
Sebastopol seemed as distant as ever, they would shake their 
heads, and say " Wisht job, ma'am — Wisht job !" I never could 
satisfy myself as to the meaning of this word, but I often heard 
it applied to subjects which would excite pity and compassion. 

It seemed to bring things strangely home to us, and in a 
manner which the dwellers of more inland districts can hardly con- 
ceive, when we spoke to sailors with whom we were unacquainted, 
and received for answer that they were just returned from Con- 
stantinople, Balaklava, and such like places ; but our excitement 
was wrought to a high pitch by the prospect of the arrival of a 
Russian barque which had been purchased by a local com- 
pany, and which was daily expected. How the men looked 
out! We never walked towards the harbour's mouth without 
meeting all the spare hands with telescopes under their arms or at 
their eyes. The interest was contagious, and at last we became 
almost as anxious as themselves, especially as the weather was 
particularly stormy just then, and we dreaded seeing her arrive 
in the shattered state in which some others did one dreary morning, 
after a night which I shall not easily forget. 

The first object worthy of notice in the town is the Church, 
which occupies a commanding position. It has been built about 
eighteen years, and takes the place of a kind of Town Hall, 
which for many years was licensed for the performance of Divine 








IfvvcUrUU, ■ 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 9 

worship. It is early English in style, and has three lancet windows 
at the east end, the centre compartment being filled with medallions 
of stained glass, the gift (I believe) of the present Earl of Devon, 
who possesses property in the neighbourhood. The pulpit and 
font — the latter carved by himself —are the gift of a clergyman to 
the Church of his native town. The Devonshire people displayed 
great taste in the ornamentation of the Church on the Christmas 
Day that we saw it. Wreaths of ivy, fir, and other more costly 
evergreens (holly did not seem so plentiful as many others) were 
twisted spirally round the columns, and myrtle was used not 
sparingly. Eor this purpose the gardens of the Moult were laid 
under contribution, and most unceremoniously, I should think, 
judging by the quantity used j but Devonshire is not niggardly of 
her vegetable treasures, and I dare say they were never missed. 
At all events, could they be used in a nobler cause than in 
heralding in the Birth of the Prince of Peace ? The townspeople 
also in general seemed to take pride in their Christmas display of 
evergreens : one house in the Island had a complete bower before 
the door, composed of fir branches supposed to represent palms, 
in the same manner as the Christmas Trees now so much in 
fashion. 

Near the Church, and a little higher up, stands the pretty 
dwelling Mount Knowle, the source of many pleasant recollections 
to us, as being at that time the residence of the two young friends 
who contributed so greatly to our enjoyment of Salcombe. The 
view from the garden is almost Italian in its character — at least, 
so my sketch makes it appear, without any intention on my part, 
owing, I suppose, to the aloes and fir trees in the garden, and 
the delicate blue colour deepened into shades of purple or green 
in the sky and water. The trees surrounding Portsmouth 
JRectory on the opposite side seemed to kiss the water, and 
Chivelstone Church at times would stand out in the distance like 
a beacon. The main street of Salcombe contains houses and 

c 



10 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

shops intermingled,, and is altogether as unlike a fashionable 
watering place as can well be. 

Returning through the town, we pass, though without being 
conscious of it, Cliff House, situated on the side of the hill, and 
connected with a beautiful garden on the opposite side of the road 
by a bridge overhead. Further on to the left, Ilingrone, belonging 
to Lord Kingsale, the front of which can only be seen on the 
opposite side of the harbour. Then again, soon after our first 
glimpse of the sea, Woodville, a charming residence, surrounded 
by shrubs of unparalleled luxuriance. The garden contains some 
rare plants, and a splendid orange tree very many years old, which 
flourishes without any other shelter than matting or a straw- 
covered hurdle during a very severe frost. There is also a curious 
shrub, which our lamented friend Mr. Strong used to call the 
New Zealand Bottle Brush, from its resemblance to that homely 
implement. As far as my memory serves, it grew like a badly- 
trained peach tree: the petals were very small, and of a pink 
colour, and the stamens an inch long, forming a pencil of scarlet 
hairs. The seeds were three years in ripening. Perhaps some 
better informed botanist may recognise the plant from the descrip- 
tion I have given. It is certainly very curious, and I should 
think rare. On the grass plat, I was informed that large 
quantities of the Neoltia Spiralis (Ladies' Tresses) annually 
appear, a delicate little plant, and much prized by botanists. 
My sketch book contains a drawing of a branch of orange tree, 
with eight small oranges in the space of about a foot, which was 
given me by the gardener who showed us over the premises. 



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CHAPTER II. 

THE CASTLE. 

It is just below Woodville that the sketch of the mouth of the 
harbour is taken ; and continuing our ramble by the road, which 
lies exactly on the top of the rocks, we discover just beneath our 
feet the old tower which I am about to describe. It-^stands on a 
rock washed at all times by the sea, although accessible from 
behind at low water, but at the same time so much exposed to its 
influence that the wonder is that any part of it should be left to 
tell the tale of its former strength ; but strong it must have been, 
for it stood a siege of four months by the Parliamentary forces 
under Sir Thomas Fairfax. It certainly is of some antiquity, for 
it was repaired by order of Prince Maurice for Charles I. in 1 645, 
and not before it was wanted ; for it seems from the account 
which I have before me, that this Fort Charles, as it was then 
called for the first time, was besieged the same day, and vigorously 
defended by its governor, Sir Edmund Eortescue, an ancestor of 
the family now residing at Eallapit, in the neighbourhood. 

The garrison was Composed of sixty-six men in all, and two 
women, laundresses; and so resolutely did they hold their own 
that it was not till May, 1646, that they capitulated, and then 
upon the most advantageous terms, to Col. Ealph Weldon, who 
was appointed by the Parliamentary forces to receive the Castle at 
their hands. It is pleasant to remark the loyalty of those brave 
meji to their religion and their king. They stipulated in the first 
place that the governor and all the garrison, in their "several 



1£ MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

and respective places, should have and enjoy full liberty in their 
profession of the true Protestant religion, professed and vowed by 
both Houses of this present Parliament in their first grand 
protestation," &c. Also, " that the fort should not be known by 
any other name than Port Charles, as it now is, or any coat of 
arms in the dining-room defaced, or anything belonging to the 
said fort/' 

By the eighth article they provide that " the governor (Sir E. 
Portescue), Sir Chr. Luckner, their servants and soldiers in the 
fort, shall have full liberty to march from thence to Pallapit, with 
their usual arms, drums beating and colours flying, with boudelars 
full of powder, and muskets appertainable, and after three values 
to yield up their arms to those whom Corronal Weldon shall 
appoint to receive them ; the governor, Sir C. Luckner, with 
both their servants, likewise the officers in common, excepted." 

One cannot help wishing that poor King Charles had always 
had equally brave and wise men to defend his cause, for it is very 
certain that had Cromwell's forces everywhere met with the same 
stout resistance, his fate would have been very different. 

Prom observations in the account book of Sir E. Portescue, 
still preserved in the family, it appears that the Castle had sus- 
tained two investments previous to the one of which we are now 
speaking — a sufficient proof of the strength of its fortifications 
and the skill and courage of its defenders. 

A large key said to have belonged to this fort is in the posses- 
sion of Sir E. Portescue' s descendants at Pallapit, with a portrait 
of the worthy old soldier himself; who, after the surrender of the 
Castle, sought refuge in Holland, where he died and was buried 
at Delft, in which place there is a monument erected to his 
memory. 

Although mere ancestry cannot confer any distinction upon 
those who have nothing better to be proud of, I should not be 
inclined to think well of any one who is so far indifferent to it as 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 13 

to be careless of preserving its honour untarnished; and were I 
of Sir E. Fortescue's descendants, the key of Salcombe Castle 
would be kept amongst ray most cherished possessions. There 
are plenty of people now-a-days of the go-ahead persuasion, who 
talk very grandly about making a name for one's self, but I 
suspect that some of our boasted great deeds would shrink into 
insignificance by comparison with some which are nearly forgotten, 
or only brought to light, like the present, by the curious and 
interested stranger. 

I do not think that the former glories of their fortress are even 
now lost upon the Salcombe people, for they are proud enough of 
it to have named one of their own beautiful little schooners the 
" Salcombe Castle"; but as it now stands, the building is a mere 
shell, over the lower part of which the water dashes at every tide. 
A few hardy plants grow on the scanty soil of the top, and the 
base is covered with sea-weeds, limpets, sea anemones, and other 
molluscous animals, whilst the rock, smoothed in places, shows 
where once the floor of the lower stories existed. 

Note. — It is only right to acknowledge the assistance I have derived from 
a former History of Salcombe whilst compiling this chapter. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE INHABITANTS. 

It is time to introduce my readers to some of the Sal com be 
worthies, though they have many of them departed to their rest 
since we knew them. 

A great character was Jacob Clarke; so old and infirm from 
exposure in his sea-faring life that he could hardly manage to get 
about with the help of two sticks : yet was he a genuine natura- 
list, and could tell where every rare shell or mollusk was to be 
found, and would go out and poke about the rocks and bring in 
a lobster, when no one else could find anything. He would have 
been invaluable to Mr. Gosse or Mr. Lewes, or any of our 
accomplished marine naturalists, and I have a theory of my own 
that he was related somehow to Mr. Gosse's hero of the Turritella. 
Certainly if old Jacob did not know a Turritella by name, he 
would have known it by sight, and would have brought that or 
any other marine production to order, had there been any one 
who would pay for it. 

One of the Salcombe characters must not be omitted, for 
it is he who would have delighted to assist in the composition 
of this little work, and would have given information which now, 
alas ! cannot be obtained — Mr. Strong. His name was truly 
significant of his nature, for his wit was keen and piercing, and 
his sound sense and fearlessness of expression made him dreaded 
by many, for he prided himself on " standing no nonsense." 
But this rough exterior wore 'off on better acquaintance, and 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 15 

when fully satisfied that he was understood he displayed an accom- 
plished and even a refined mind, with a great love for literature, 
poetry, and music, and what, if cultivated, would have been a 
fine taste for art. During the time of our stay he was entering 
into what proved to be his last illness, and as we found that our 
visits were a comfort to him, we generally managed to see him 
several times in the week. 

It was a great amusement to myself and 'the' two young friends 
I have mentioned to rout out his books, under pretence 'of- calling 
upon him. How he scolded us, and declared we should have 
but one at a time ! which was only a device to get us to call 
on him the oftener. I think 1 see him now. His feet on the 
fender, his hands in his pockets, always, propped up in-kK? arm chair, 
with his favourite books on the table, and telescope within reach, 
the more readily to scrutinize every ship which passed his windows 
on her way to Kingsbridge ; a microscope at hand, and his violin 
where he could look at it. With what delight he used to turn 
over his portfolio containing drawings of the various rare plants 
which grew in the neighbouring gardens, of which he was an 
accomplished delineator, and how delighted he was if any one 
recognised the rarer specimens ! His great pleasure, however, 
was in seeing me draw, or finish up some of the hasty sketches 
which a winter's day would allow me to take. Already a good 
linguist, he was commencing the study of German, in which he 
flattered himself he should derive some assistance from her who 
now records these characteristics of a lost friend. I fancy how 
people must have been mistaken in him who judged only from 
externals, which certainly were far from imposing. 

His dwelling was on a piece with himself. Down — ever so far 
down a long passage which led to the sea, was a door which 
seemed to have no particular business there, but to have been put 
in by the builder on the principle of blank windows, to take off 
the sameness of the long wall which preceded it. Once having 



16 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

obtained admission into a large sort of hall, which was always a 
matter of difficulty till you became possessed of the secret, your 
eyes were greeted with a vast quantity of fishing tackle and other 
objects belonging to a boat, which was suspended at the further 
end outside, and over the water. Large Spanish wine jars, of the 
same material as that exhibited in the Crystal Palace of 1851, 
reminded one of the Forty Thieves, who, however, would have 
fared badly had they ventured to attack Mr. Strong, who possessed 
a whole armoury of "pikes, and guns, and bows." Then you 
passed a large flock of stuffed birds of different climates, arranged 
on some peculiar principle known only to their proprietor. Next, 
"an alligator stuffed and empty fishes," and on the top of the 
stairs, the very albatross which the merciless Ancient Mariner 
killed with his cross-bow ! 

Advancing in the dark by rather an awkward staircase, we 
reached the presence chamber, where sat the master himself in a 
kind of grim state, relaxing, however, his assumed sternness at 
the approach of any one whom he really liked. The first greetings 
over, he used to dash away into his subject at once, and greatly 
delighted was he if he could puzzle us as to the author of any of 
his queer out-of-the-way quotations. A young lady who was 
staying at Salcombe, and who rather set up for a " blue," began 
unluckily to try her skill upon Mr. Strong. He quietly asked 
her if she had ever read Paradise Lost, which so discomfited her 
that she did not venture into his den again in a hurry. The fact 
was, he had just been refreshing his memory by reading it after 
the lapse of some years, and he told me he was astonished to 
observe the root it had taken in our language, so many phrases 
and turns of thought being distinctly traceable to it. This, no 
doubt, is true of many of our great writers, and I often think it 
would be worth while to peruse in chronological order all our 
great national authors, for the purpose of ascertaining how much 
of our daily vocabulary is enriched by them. A Northamptonshire 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 17 

Baker, has adopted the opposite course to illustrate Dryden and 
Shakspeare, explaining many of the passages which have puzzled 
commentators so much, by a reference to words in common use 
amongst the poor in that county ; but I should be glad to see 
some one illustrate our common talk by references of our choicest 
ideas to their real authors. 

Mr. Strong was also a marine naturalist, and had a collection 
of all the shells to be found in the estuary, which he had made 
with the assistance of Jacob Clarke, amongst which the Pinna 
Marina was the most curious. The old story of its attendant 
cancer is quite exploded by modern naturalists, and it is astonish- 
ing how it ever could have got abroad. Perhaps the idea of the 
jackal being the lion's provider may turn out equally false : more 
probably he is the lion's hanger on, a type of many of our species, 
who start up fast enough wherever anything is to be had. 
Indeed, our fixed notions have been sadly upset of late by the 
discoveries of modern science ; and I suspect that some of us are 
secretly lamenting that Le Vaillant's travels in the region of the 
Cape of Good Hope, that delight of our younger days, are now 
recognised beyond all doubt as a literary forgery, for a great 
deal of belief has been expended upon them. 

Some of Mr. Strong's opinions in matters of taste were deci- 
dedly heterodox : for instance, he would delight himself with an 
enormous bunch of double daffodils, without a blade of green to 
relieve them, on the middle of his table ; and no respect for our 
opinion could induce him to think them ugly. One of the two 
young friends to whom I have alluded, therefore, took him in 
hand, and insisted on clearing out the bilious-looking flowers, 
and replacing them by a tasty bouquet of ferns, periwinkles, 
" ragged robins," and others of our wild favourites. So elegantly 
were they arranged, that even he had to give way before her taste 
and sauciness. A great triumph to be sure it was, and one of 
which he did not soon hear the last. 



18 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

Next came our friend at Mount Knowle, who has also passed 
away from amongst us. The view from his pretty villa was a 
source of unceasing gratification to him, for he had grown old in 
sight of it, and could conceive of no change for the better ; and, 
indeed, it would have been difficult to imagine a landscape pos- 
sessing all the requisites of hills, wood, and water, in equally 
beautiful proportions. The long walk behind his house, charm- 
ingly sheltered from the high winds, was decorated in the quaint 
taste of a by-gone generation. Cannons were planted at regular 
intervals, which would have been alarming had there been any 
fear of their going off, but around which the lambs contentedly 
nibbled, like those in Landseer's beautiful picture of Peace. 
Figure-heads of vessels, looking very grim, and leering at you 
with the one eye which time had left — very Polyphemuses in their 
way — would certainly have alarmed any one who had come on 
the premises with felonious intentions; at least, if their con- 
sciences had been as tender as Bewick's thief s in his incomparable 
vignette. There were fushcias which would grow in spite of 
adverse circumstances too terrible to be contemplated by the 
devoted gardener, like myself, and abundance of single white 
stocks, which delighted their owner fully as much as Mr. Strong's 
yellow daffodils charmed our eccentric friend. Having lived so 
long in the world, he seemed to have lost all " count of time," 
and assured me that some middle-aged ladies who had called on 
us were " very nice young people ! " All things are by com- 
parison, no doubt; and it is curious to observe how lenient 
people become to " forty " as they approach " thirty." 

The whole family of Coles must not be omitted from the list of 
Salcombe notables, beginning with old Henry Cole, who was by 
profession a turner and engraver of tombstones, mender of um- 
brellas and watches, brooches and camp-stools, besides doing 
anything that no one else could do, from carving a figure-head to 
setting a sun-dial; but who, nevertheless, gave lessons on the 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 19 

piano, which like other things, I believe, he had taught himself, 
besides playing the violin for his own private delectation. After 
him comes his son, who was precentor and leader of the instru- 
mental music at church, at the head of a choir composed almost 
exclusively of members of his own family, and who attended all 
parties and merry makings which ship-building did not interfere 
with on the week days. Occasionally, his band would serenade 
the inhabitants of our quiet street with the inspiriting strains of 
the "Combined Fleets" quadrilles; and the Christmas carols, 
we must all allow, were beautifully sung under his auspices. 

Three boats plied at that time daily between Salcombe and 
Kingsbridge; and considerable rivalry existed between their 
owners, though not between their respective passengers. I 
confess to belong to the popular party, and to prefer Edward 
"Wood's boat, for he was the fastest rower, and the best-looking 
fellow withal ; 

" And O ! he had that merry glance 
Which seldom lady's heart resists ; " 

and I expect the cunning rogue did not display his good teeth 
and sparkling eyes for nothing, for it was easy to see that old 
March got very little custom, especially amongst the womankind. 
I really used to pity the poor old fellow when we passed him with 
our boat quite full, and he toiling away for the sake of one pas- 
senger, who did not look very solvent after all. There was a 
story afloat that Edward Wood had been in earlier life on the 
point of marriage with a lady very far above him in station, but 
that the intrigue was discovered by the usual " inexorable parent/' 
and the match, in consequence, broken off, and Edward Wood 
left with nothing but the renown of having once nearly married 
a lady. 

I suspect that the " Salcombes," as they designate themselves, 
are apt to be a little censorious in their judgment, and local in 
their ideas, and rather hard in their opinions of those who do not 



20 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

come up to their mark, especially in matters of dress. To be 
sure, the subject occupied a good deal of their attention, and the 
generality of the captains' wives had plenty of money to spend on 
it, as during their husbands' long voyages, they could practise 
any little economies they pleased, and dress themselves at the 
expense of their comfort. In an evil day for our self-esteem we 
were seized with a desire to know what they thought of us, for, 
being strangers in the place, we were quite sure that some con- 
clusion on so important a subject must have been arrived at ; and 
one of us undertook, through an " intermediate," to find it out. 
Gentle Reader, what do you think we heard for our pains ? Never 
be too inquisitive on such a point, for it is ten to one you will 
hear something you don't like. Well then, since I have gone so 
far, I must confess the truth. Salcombe thought that Mrs. L. 
and the Miss P/s " could not be ladies, because they walked 
where no one but the cockle boys went!" After this sweeping 
annihilation of all our pretensions to gentility, no wonder we 
betook ourselves more and more to the society of these very boys, 
especially when the tides were low, and we could make them our 
guides to places not otherwise easily reached. Some of them 
were the handsomest little fellows I ever saw. Two of them 
were our especial favourites. One of us upheld a little man with 
blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and a round wide-awake ; but my boy, 
whom I maintained against all Salcombe for beauty, had dark 
eyes, a Murillo complexion, and such a ravishing red cap ! 1 used 
to catch him, and send him messages, for the pleasure of talking 
to him. 

As the business of the place is almost entirely confined to the 
building of ships and the foreign fruit trade, the title of 
" Captain " is of almost universal acceptation ; indeed, it is as 
difficult to meet with an untitled "Mr." in Salcombe as it was 
for Mark Tapley to find a common man in America. Very 
strange stories had some of these men to tell ; and I regret that 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 21 

I never recorded any of them at the time they were related. 
Extraordinary natural productions were also to be seen in their 
houses, and pictures of their own vessels, always "in a most 
tremendous storm/' in some unreadable latitude. 

In general, the vessels in the harbour hoisted flags on Sundays, 
and on all occasions of congratulation, such as a birth or wedding 
in any of the families of their owners or captains ; which practice, 
from the near relationship of the families, produced the most 
lively appearance, for the Salcombe people are essentially clannish, 
and what affects one affects all. People may laugh at this ; but 
it is pleasant to see, nevertheless, and difficult to be observed in 
any place which has not these external tokens to show. A pretty 
custom the children had on May Day of coming round with May 
garlands, which were made of all available flowers, particularly 
the golden-blossomed furze, which grew so plentifully on the 
other side of the water, and which mixed with evergreens pro- 
duced a brilliant effect. Some had a doll, by way of May Queen, 
cunningly inserted in the middle of a bower. Our little blue- 
eyed friend had a magnificent ship on the top of his May garland, 
the whole being supported by a long pole, and carried through 
the town in conscious pride of its being the handsomest in the 
procession. Sweet children ! their merry faces are even now 
before me, and their childish voices ringing in my ears, as they 
return their thanks for the few pence bestowed on them, which, 
sooth to say, gave equal pleasure to the giver and receiver. 

" Oh evil day ! if I were sullen 
While the Earth herself is adorning 

This sweet May morning, 
And the children are pulling 

On every side, 
In a thousand valleys far and wide, 

Fresh flowers." 

One of the tradesmen asked us if we would like to see some 
beautiful feather flowers which he had just received from Madeira. 
Of course we did like to see them, as we always do to see any- 



22 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

thing pretty, and he ushered us into his nice little drawing-room, 
and there we beheld the most exquisite groups imaginable. It 
w r as easy to see that they had been modelled from nature, for 
many of them could be recognised ; and, beautiful as were those 
in the Exhibition of 1851, these were fully equal to them. 
Probably they came from the same hands, and it is a consolation 
that the poor nuns who are said to make them have something 
so pretty to spend their time upon ; but, for my part, I am sure 
I could never sit down to make waxen or any other imitations of 
flowers with any patience : their exquisite beauty drives me wild ; 
and even in painting them from nature, I believe I experience as 
much pain as pleasure from the employment. No, I say, let 
them be fleeting ; for that is the nature which their Maker has 
seen fit to bestow upon them, and, indeed, is one element of the 
tender pleasure with which we regard them. I believe all will 
admit that a favourite plant may flower too long ; and I suspect 
that the most beautiful imitations, merely as such, would in a 
short time become insipid. Such, however, is not the case with 
a painting : in this instance, 

" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever ; " 

and the human intellect and labour bestowed upon it will make 
it ever interesting. But is there anything so tiresome as a bunch 
of Everlastings ? 

I learnt at Salcombe the solution of a question which had 
frequently perplexed me ; and as I have since asked many people, 
and no one could tell me where St. Michael's oranges came from, 
I will relate how I came by this piece of information. The Island 
Queen, a Salcombe-built vessel of which her owners were justly 
proud, came in one day from a long voyage, and we were told 
that she was just returned from St. Michael's with a cargo of 
oranges. Now, I thought, will be a good time to discover the 
whereabouts of that place, if I wait long enough, and don't 
betray my ignorance (it is astonishing how much one hates to be 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 23 

thought a fool) ; so I said nothing, but a few days afterwards 
contrived to get into conversation with a sailor, artfully bringing 
the subject round to the Island Queen. To my great satisfaction, 
he volunteered the information that the vessel was just returned 
from the Azores ! and rushing to my atlas as soon as we returned 
to our lodgings, I found the veritable St. Michael's sure enough, 
just as he had described; but it is astonishing how few people 
know where it is. I suspect we have many of us a bad habit of 
laying aside our atlases when we leave school, instead of keeping 
them at hand, or referring to a globe, which is far better, as a 
clearer notion of the relative position of places is obtained by this 
means. A friend once told me that he had no idea how near 
California is to China till he found himself looking at Wyld's 
globe. Our maps of the globe in two hemispheres-conduce not a 
little to confusion in such matters. 

When I add old Luckham, a fisherman who would make his 
fortune by sitting to a marine painter, if any such should visit 
Salcombe ; and Perrin and his " mullies," which is the Devon- 
shire word for donkies, as " dickies " in Norfolk, " jennies " in 
Northamptonshire, and "cutties" in Northumberland, and who 
would shine in the picturesque heath -and -donkey style, not 
forgetting what Mr. Buskin calls the "inestimable value of dirt" 
to such subjects ; I think I have said enough to make the general 
reader understand that the " Salcombes " are not an every-day 
set of people. 



CHAPTEB IV. 

A NEW STUDY. 

A person accustomed to active pursuits naturally feels at a loss 
when prevented by any cause from engaging in them, and so it 
fared with me. The unusual coldness of the weather during the 
early part of our stay at Salcombe prevented my leaving the house 
by the week together, and it was necessary to find some pursuit to 
occupy the otherwise monotonous time. One cannot read all day 
long, though I can do as much as most people in that way, but 
books were scarce. I had read many of our good friend Mr. 
Strong's, and all the library of our neighbour the chemist, which 
in truth was not extensive; and I began seriously to consider 
what would become of me if things went on in this way. In a 
happy hour I remembered that I knew nothing of Marine Botany, 
though I had often wished for an opportunity of pursuing the 
study, but the distance from the sea at which we had generally 
resided had hitherto precluded the idea, and I must admit that 
the inexplicable forms I met with whenever I took up a sea-weed 
to look at it always deterred me from the investigation. But 
now, if ever, seemed to be the time ; so I determined to find out 
some of the species, and to draw as many of them as I could. 
But then how to begin ? There seemed nothing distinctive to be 
got out of them by looking, that was clear — though I now rather 
w r onder at thinking so — so I wrote to a scientific friend, who 
presently sent me a childish sort of a book (Landsborough's 
Introduction), with plenty of pictures, which only puzzled me 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 25 

more and more, as I fancied I could call to mind having seen 
every one of them. In this state of mind how was I ever to find 
out a Fucus from a Chondrus ? 

At last, by resolute studying, I found I could recognise one by 
comparison with the drawing, and as "c'est le premier pas qui 
coute," I began to discover that others too might be found, though 
much unnecessary trouble was taken by trying to make out what 
could not be known by a beginner like myself, viz., the difference 
between a plant in fructification, and one out of it. However, 
nothing daunted, I set to work, and after learning the glossary 
of scientific terms, which I advise every one to do at the outset, 
as it saves so much trouble afterwards, I began to see my way a 
little out of the tangled maze in which I had found myself. Being 
grouped on the natural system, the family likenesV^soon became 
apparent, and the microscope revealed by degrees the texture 
of the plant, on which so much of the arrangement depends. I 
had no idea that I could have become so interested in any pursuit, 
for it was long since I had attempted any thing new. Distance 
from libraries, and lack of intellectual society, had gradually 
reduced me to a humdrum state of mind : in fact I was begin- 
ning to think a quoi bon? of many things in which I had 
formerly delighted; but I found the truth of Wordsworth's 
assertion, that 

" Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her : 'tis her privilege, 
Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
From joy to joy ; " 

and henceforth the poor despised sea-weeds, the waste of Nature, 
the epithet for all that is vile and worthless, became for me the 
source of unceasing delight and interest. 

I fear some of my acquaintance would have thought me slightly 
demented had they seen the care and pains I took with this new 
study, but nevertheless the infection spread, and my husband and 
our young friends quickly became as interested as myself, and 

E 



26 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

many were the wettings which they got in consequence of their 
kind desire of affording me pleasure. 

I never look over my collection of drawings of sea-weeds 
without a lively remembrance of the happiness it afforded me 
in making it, and ungrateful indeed should I be to the Author 
of all our enjoyments could I ever cease to be thankful for the 
instruction they yielded. 

The microscope afforded such charming treats, and the tiny 
little plumes, which without its assistance we should never have 
discovered to be such, when magnified displayed such exquisite 
organization that we were never tired of admiring; and not until 
our eyes warned us by their aching that we had used them too 
long, did we lay aside our beautiful favourites with regret. 

I particularly remember the unexpectedly elegant appearance of 
the Ptilota Sericea, the Calithamnion Plumula, and Seirospora 
Griffithsia, the two latter of which might be supposed to be only 
a lump of reddish pulp, and passed over without guessing their 
hidden beauty. However, if any one will but make a beginning 
there is no fear of anything, however unpromising, being neglected. 
A few directions for observing them may not be thought out of 
place. 

Wash the specimens which you intend to examine in one of the 
pools of sea water which you will be sure to find. Expose them 
as little as possible to the air on the way home ; for this purpose 
a basket lined with oiled silk will be found very useful. They will 
keep moist in this for a long time, but it is better to immerse the 
more delicate ones in a bowl of sea water as soon as you can. 
Fresh water instantly kills some varieties, especially of the " Red 
Series," turning them from crimson to an orange scarlet. I do 
not know that any British sea-weed is of that colour, and those 
that are so found must be considered in a state of decay. From 
ignorance of this fact I painted two specimens vermilion on 
my first commencement of the study, and found the impossibility 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 27 

of arriving at a just conclusion as to their names, till the 
advancing spring soon showed me the same plants in their natural 
hues, a dullish crimson ; but I still keep the drawings as warnings 
to my friends. 

When you intend to study them, each cluster should be shaken 
loosely, and a single frond or spray detached for special examina- 
tion, and floated by itself in a white dish full of water. A small 
portion of this latter may be then taken off with a sharp-pointed 
pair of scissors and laid in its wet state on the transparent plate 
of the microscope, when the texture and fructification will be dis- 
covered. 

Those that are required for drying should be floated in a dish, 
the student cutting out any of the branches which overlap each 
other too much, but being careful to preserve thef^oot, without 
which no specimen can be considered perfect. A sheet of cartridge 
paper is then to be introduced into the water beneath, the plant 
floated to its proper position on it, the fronds neatly arranged 
with a bodkin or blunt-pointed instrument, and the whole cau- 
tiously withdrawn from the water without displacement. A very 
little practice will render this an easy operation. The superfluous 
moisture must next be drained off by sloping the sheets for a few 
minutes, which must then be subjected to a gentle pressure, with 
a sheet of blotting paper between each. It is well that they 
should not dry too fast, which can be prevented by throwing a 
damp cloth over all, but the blotting paper ought to be shifted 
two or three times, and the weight increased as the specimens 
become drier. 

Most sea-weeds will be found by this treatment to have become 
completely glued to the paper ; but a few will not adhere by any 
treatment. Such must be fastened with slips of paper, in the 
usual botanical way : the larger and thicker-stemmed ones may 
be secured with needle and thread, which is an effectual and tidy 
plan. Some species will shrink so as to be hardly recognisable in 



28 MYRTLES AND ALOES, 

their dried state, do what you will : for such I can offer no 
remedy ; but those who can draw will find them amply repay the 
trouble, by the pretty sketches which they afford, and by the far 
more accurate knowledge which will be thus obtained. 

I advise my friends just to make the attempt, and they will be 
astonished at the number of species which a rocky shore affords. 
The dark brown or olive species are the easiest to observe, and 
can soon be learnt by the help of a treatise on marine algee, of 
which Professor Harvey's is certainly the best. A sandy shore is 
unfavourable to the development of most species, from the want 
of attachment for their roots; and the collector is therefore 
dependent upon the waifs and strays of more favoured localities. 
Bat, even in this case, a greater variety will be found than would 
be imagined by those who had not tried the experiment; and 
high tides and stormy winds will be looked on as advantages 
rather than otherwise by those who have this pursuit to console 
them under bad weather— so sad an affliction as it is generally 
considered at a watering place. 

But if there are no weeds, there are yet stranger things to be 
discovered, natives of the sandy shore. " Come to these yellow 
sands," in company with Mr. Gosse, Mr. Lewes, or Professor 
Harvey, and they will show you things " undreamt of in your 
philosophy." 

I remember being sadly disappointed at the flat shore of 
Abergeley, to which place we went fortified with a new copy of 
"British Marine Algse," and expecting to do wonders in that 
line. Not a sea-weed was to be found, save a few long yellow 
fronds of the Laminaria. However, not to be outdone, I looked 
about, and soon discovered a zoophyte in its living state, which 
most people imagine a sea-weed, as it is generally found dry on 
the shore, looking as if cut out of rough whitey-brown paper. 
Every one has seen it thus ; but few have seen it alive, and waving 
in the water the delicate little cilia by which it gains its nourish- 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 29 

ment. There are two varieties most commonly known — Flustra 
Foliacea, the larger and more frequent, and Flustra Chartacea, 
which is more delicate in its form and not nearly so common. 

Attached to the stems of small sea-weeds is frequently seen the 
elegant Crisia Denticulata, almost as transparent as the water 
itself, or, more properly speaking, like spun glass. Whilst 
looking at this sometimes, a singular creature (Isthmia Obliquata) 
formed something like little baskets attached to each other by a 
slender thread, and moving in all directions, is to be seen ; and 
ako another curious one, very much like a collection of Pan's 
pipes, but stretching out in pairs, or threes, or one after the 
other, in the fashion of parallel rulers. These last two, however, 
are only visible by the aid of a microscope. 

But to return to Salcombe. c -^ 

The sea anemones which are to be found clustering on the 
ledges of the rocks, and left bare for a considerable time at every 
low tide, are very curious and instructive. Naturalists have of 
late paid great attention to them. Dr. Harvey's description of 
their anatomy must be quoted. "There is an outer leathery 
skin, separated from the inner coat or wall of the stomach by a 
hollow space, in which are placed numerous vertical partitions or 
laininse, radiating towards the centre like the gills of a mushroom. 
These plates have their origin on the inner surface of the leathery 
coat, to which they act as a support : some of them project so far 
as to touch the walls of the stomach, and others are narrower and 
shorter than the rest, exactly as we find in the gills of a mushroom. 
In the sea anemone the laminae continue fleshy through life : in 
the madrepore they secrete a coating of lime, which thickens by 
degrees, and at length forms a stony cast of the animal." We 
found, besides the common red ones, which were everywhere 
plentiful, beautiful specimens of a delicate apple green, with most 
exquisitely brilliant lilac tips; olive brown, with bluish tentacular; 
the pearly Crassicornis, with a body like foreign china, with 



30 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

opaline feelers. This last I found on the shore, covered with 
sand and bits of shell ; and I could not imagine what it was ; but 
on washing it, and leaving it in our impromptu aquarium, formed 
of the middle dish of a dessert service, till the next morning, all 
its beauties became apparent. It had opaque bands on the back 
of the feelers, which contrasted elegantly with the transparent 
opaline texture of the rest, from each point of which protruded 
the finest possible bristle, visible even to the naked eye, which 
closed upon our fingers with the most sickening sensation imagi- 
nable. There were also two splendid specimens of Actinia Bellis 
to be seen stretching their long tubes in a rock pool, to which we 
had only access at low tides, and which we preserved a profound 
secret, lest the cockle or " squin " boys should find them out, and 
thus deprive us of the pleasure of watching them. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOCK POOLS. 

" The water is calm and still below, 

For the winds and the waves are absent there, 
And the sands are as bright as the stars that glow 

In the motionless fields of the upper air. 
There, with its waving blade of green, 

The sea flag streams through the silent water^ 
And the crimson flag of the Dulse is seen 

To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter. 

g£ jr W W 

And life, in rare and beautiful forms, 

Is sporting amidst those bowers of stone ; 
And is safe when the wrathful spirit of storms 

Has made the top of the waves his own." 

Percival. 

After the stormy weather with which we were visited, we used 
to walk on the rocks which were bare at low water, for the pur- 
pose of visiting the small pools, which were never dry ; and here 
we had an opportunity of watching the growth of the sea-weeds 
from time to time. The more delicate ones apparently made but 
little progress ; but the larger ones grew almost under our eyes. 
I remember one pool particularly, which we saw under very 
favourable aspects. A bright afternoon sun illumined the grey 
rocks of Limebury Point, nearly opposite to Salcombe Castle. 
A clear blue sky was reflected in a pool, the bottom of which was 
filled with yellowish sea-weeds; the two combining to give the 
water a delicate green tint, which told to great advantage by 
comparison with the grey rocks. Between some of the rocks the 



32 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

water rushed with considerable rapidity, communicating to the 
corrugated folds of the Laminaria (a dark brown sea-weed) a 
beautifully waving motion, resembling tropical vegetation. Other 
parts of the pool were occupied with the fronds of the Pycno- 
phyeus, looking as if cast in brass ; and others again had large 
plants of the Cystoceira Ericoides, a coarse-looking alga, something 
like leafless branches of birch trees, but the stem exhibiting, whilst 
under water, the verdigris green alluded to by Professor Harvey. 
The outer edge was thickly clothed with the growing fronds of the 
crimson Chylocladia Articulata, and the dull brownish purple of 
the llhodymenia Palmata in its earlier stages, so unlike the full- 
grown plant that unless seen in its transition state a beginner 
could never suppose them to be of the same origin. Low down 
in the pool were the olive Ectocarpuses, some of them looking 
like lumps of dirty wool, and the young filaments of the Chorda 
Filum waving like a tuft of Feather Grass, and showing their 
fringed edges, which were otherwise invisible ; also, large bunches 
of the Chondrus Crispus, which, viewed under water, exhibits a 
beautiful blue colour like the steel of watchsprings, &c. The 
parts of the rocks exposed at low water to the air were covered 
with the Fucus Canaliculars, its low-growing brown fronds 
now enriched with bright golden pods, whilst nearer the water, 
and generally less exposed, 

" Arborets of jointed stone were there" — 

in other words, corallines in all their stages, beginning from a 
blotch of reddish-coloured chalky substance, and gradually deve- 
loping to the perfect plant of a pinkish or rather bricky tinge; 
and still lower down, and never quite dry, were the white ledges 
of the Melobesia, appearing very like fungi or decayed wood. The 
whole thing, whether viewed with the eye of a naturalist or of an 
artist, was most enchanting. So gaily a tinted foreground is not 
easy to meet with, and there is certainly room on the walls of our 
Exhibitions for the works of an artist who will take all the marine 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 33 

circumstances into his consideration, and paint pictures of thein 
with the same scrupulous fidelity with which William Hunt exe- 
cuted that marvellous bit of Monl Blanc. 

If Mr. Euskin would write up rock pools as he has done granite 
stones and flowery banks, there might yet be a chance for such 
a " desired consummation." Hunt has already painted moss and 
fungi to drive our botanists to distraction : perhaps these pages 
may give him the hiut to try sea- weeds ; I am sure in point of 
richness of colour they are equal to mosses. 

Mr. Mackie, in some papers published in the Art Union, has 
advocated the study of sea-weeds as models for design, but he 
applies them more to purposes of sculptured ornament than to 
painting, and I had myself a fancy for painting a set of biscuit 
china with subjects from my sea-weed book^ in spite of 
laying myself open to the charge of sinning against aesthetic 
propriety by depicting sea-weeds on tea-cups. Be that as it may, 
I am sure they would form a very pretty and novel decoration, 
and I do not yet despair of seeing it done, though by somebody 
else. 

Tt is pleasant to observe throughout the writings of Southey 
how fond he was of these rock pools. Many of our song writers 
have imagined them with great poetical propriety as the abodes of 
nymphs and water spirits. The " Mermaid's Song " is known to 
all, but Southey is one of the first who appears to have observed 
their homes with the eye of a naturalist as well as of a poet. This 
is obvious in " The Curse of Kehama," and it awakened the remem- 
brance of many scenes in which we had delighted ; and we have 
since met with this note in his journal, which was immediately 
transcribed : — ' ' I walked on the beach at Ealmouth, caught soldier 
crabs, and loitered to admire the sea anemones in their ever varying 
shapes of beauty, read Gebir, and wrote half a book of Thalaba." 
And true it is that no poet ever arrived at eminence who had not 
loved and studied nature. We see it through them all. The 



34 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

sublime Milton was exquisitely tender when he spoke of flowers, 
and Shakspeare's genius is never more thoroughly appreciated 
than when he descends to the scenes of country life. Ophelia 
with her willow wreath, Perdita and her flowers, Titania and her 
fairy attendants, will always take the greatest hold on the popular 
imagination. I suspect we only really like what we understand, 
and this is the secret of the admiration we feel for those pictures 
which present the most successful delineations of nature, accom- 
panied with a touch of human feeling. A lonely spring, with a 
broken jug, will tell a long tale to those who can understand it ; 
and it is this appeal to human sympathies which constitutes the 
superiority of such pictures over photographs, which, though so 
exquisite in themselves, are merely reflections of nature after all, 
and do not answer mind to mind like the paintings of an accom- 
plished artist. For this reason I believe that photography will 
never supersede art, though it will render essential service to 
artists, and also serve to elevate the taste of the million, 
enabling them the better to appreciate the works of those who 
make nature the ground-work of their representations. It is 
doubtful if the industrious works of the Pre-Eaphaelites would 
have attracted so large a share of the public attention, if the simul- 
taneous introduction of photography — like the aid rendered by 
the art of printing to the Reformation — had not, so to speak, 
backed up the fidelity of their representations; for it is very 
credible that many people have given more attention to photo- 
graphs than to nature. Still, if this has proved the means of 
awakening their powers of observation, we must not find fault, 
but congratulate them, though late in the day, on coming to the 
use of their eyes. But could any one who has studied Millais' 
exquisite picture, "Autumn Leaves," ever find the same satis- 
faction in the best photographed foregrounds ? And why ? 
Because " Autumn Leaves " has in it the tender touch of human 
sympathy, as well as a high moral purpose. The twilight gloom, 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 35 

proclaiming " the night is coming, in which no man can work " — 
the leaves, 

" Which all unmurmuring part 
With their pure lives," 

collected for burning by the hands of children — the variety of 
foliage, cultivated and uncultivated in the same heap — all combine 
to tell the tale of fleeting mortality ; whilst the ascending wreaths 
of smoke proclaim " our life is but a vapour ! " One generation 
has fulfilled its mission ; another is coming in its stead ! 

Still, let me not be thought to undervalue photography. I 
only contend that it cannot to an educated mind supply the 
place of art, though as a reflection of natural scenery it may, and 
undoubtedly does, afford great enjoyment, and, as I would fain 
hope, prepare the way for the appreciation of something better ; 
but, at best, it only gives the present, and is powerless to carry 
the mind backward or forward as a painting does ; and I am of 
the opinion that no one but an artist, or one possessed of artistic 
feeling in a high degree, ought to meddle with it. It is certain 
that only a portrait painter can produce a good photographic 
likeness. Witness the dis-similitudes which are every day perpe- 
trated by wandering professors of the art ! 

I do wish, however, that some one would photograph a few of 
the rock pools I have just described, supposing them capable of 
being represented through the medium of water, which I rather 
doubt ; for they would be invaluable to a marine naturalist, and 
recal to many in the midst of their more uninteresting occupations 
the happy days spent in exploring their treasures. 



CHAPTER VI. 

DAFFODILS. 



-" Daffodils, 



With the green world they live in." 

Keats. 

One day in the beginning of April we were surprised to see all 

the children of the place walking about with enormous bunches 

of daffodils in their hands, which was the more startling as few 

of the habitations of the poor have any gardens attached to them ; 

but, on closer inspection, our botanical eyes were delighted at 

finding them to be the delicate single daffodil, or Lent lilies, as 

they are called in Devonshire. Now I never could find any 

beauty in daffodils, and used to wonder why Wordsworth wrote 

such a pretty poem on them, and why every one who wrote on 

spring flowers was in duty bound to bring in Shakspeare's 

" Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; " 

and old Herrick's 

" Fair daffodils ! we weep to see 
You haste away so soon j " 

and numberless other apostrophes to what I always considered the 
ugliest flower in the garden. Now the mystery was explained: 
now, for the first time in my life, did I see the real wild daffodil ; 
and a very elegant and poetical looking flower it is. Its delicate 
lemon-coloured corolla, with its deep cup, contrasted with the 
bluish green leaves, gives it a beauty quite unknown to our 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 37 

vulgar acquaintances of the garden, and fully justifies Milton in 
his expression, 

" Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears ; " 

so being in league with a botanical relative, I proposed to find 
out their "green world," in order to send her some good 
specimens. 

Our young friends entered into our plan eagerly, as they were 
kind enough to do in most cases ; and by dint of catching every 
child we met who had a bunch of flowers in his hand, and 
subjecting him to a species of inquisitorial catechising, which 
made him stare as if he thought we suspected him of stealing 
them, we at last discovered that they came from Maryknowle, or, 
as they called it, " Merry knowle " ; and no doubt such it proved to 
the happy collectors. 

But then, where was Maryknowle ? It was settled by reference 
to the best authorities that we must per force go out on the 
Malborough road, and trust to some presumed fellow traveller to 
show the way across certain fields; so not without reluctance, 
we bade farewell to our beloved rocks and sea, and prepared for a 
walk inland, which, bye-the-bye, we seldom did without thinking 
how very pretty the lanes were, if we could but persuade ourselves 
to walk in them. After passing many a field, and climbing many 
a stile, and opening gates curiously fastened by putting a large 
stone against them to prevent their flying open, which ingenious 
contrivance is called the " Devonshire padlock," but which seems 
to have been imported from Ireland, for it is an invention worthy 
of that nation so fertile in expedients to stave off doing the right 
thing, we came to a cross road, without having seen the petal of 
a daffodil. But there was a boy in the distance ; and being the 
first human being we had seen since we left Salcombe, we hailed 
him with a somewhat unwonted pleasure. On nearer inspection 
he proved the ugliest of mortals ; Lord Cranstown's goblin page 



38 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

could not have surpassed him in this respect. He was, I presume, 
personating Cupid, for he was shooting with a bow and arrows of 
his own manufacture, an accomplishment of which he was not a 
little proud, and willing enough to display his skill on the exhibi- 
tion of a penny which one of our party luckily happened to have 
about him. During this performance I looked about, and found 
the pretty small blue periwinkle (Vinca Minor) growing profusely 
on a bank, and covering it with its purple flowers, the first time I 
had ever seen it wild. Does any one know what a beautiful 
microscopic object its pistil is ? 

After passing a farm house, so out of the world that it was a 
matter of speculation if the inhabitants knew anything about the 
war which was then raging, we struck into a lane embowered with 
trees, then leafless, evidently a mere water-course in wet weather, 
and in that respect resembling many other celebrated Devonshire 
lanes. It was full of stones and all manner of impediments, but 
disclosing sweet little patches of green ferns here and there, tufts 
of primroses in the most tantalizing situations behind bramble 
bushes; and in the wettest places, large patches of the golden 
saxifrage. Orchises, too, were peeping out of the ground, with 
their handsome spotted leaves and tips of rosy purple-coloured 
spikes, giving a clue to the Cheshire name of " Gethseinane." 
Eurther on we came to a still wilder place, in which fir trees and 
rocks were plentiful; and we found one place which we unani- 
mously agreed was intended by Nature for a fernery. 

It was an exhausted quarry. Long streamers of grey ivy 
wound in and out of the fissures ; the ground was covered with 
plants of fox -gloves and the blue Gromwell, which seemed very 
abundant, giving promise of great future beauty; the elegant 
little " Herb Bobert," or wild geranium, was spreading its pink 
flowers, mixed with the scarlet leaves of the "preceding year, over 
some loose stones — a very favourite spot with this little beauty, 
whilst goldfinches were flitting about, giving animation to the 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 39 

whole scene, and rifling for the hundredth time the heads of the 
last year's thistles ; and ferns were springing up every where to 
render the spot more attractive. Altogether it was delightful, 
and we lingered long in it ; but still there were no daffodils, and 
the place did not seem likely to afford any. And this was Mary- 
knowle ! " Those tiresome boys to lead us such a chase, and 
all for nothing ! " " Was there ever such a shame ? and who 
knows what we may have missed this afternoon's low tide on the 
shore ? " " Never will I trust a boy again; much less a Salcombe 
boy ! " So we went on grumbling in true British style, till a turn 
in the road brought us to a rather swampy place, and passing 
through a nearly extinct orchard into a narrow lane, also very 
wet, what did we see ? Daffodils ! beyond the power of man to 
count. Daffodils on the hedges ; daffodils in the pitches ; daffo- 
dils growing out of the stumps of rotten trees ; daffodils in the 
very foot-path ! No question now where the boys got their golden 
treasures : the whole place was a botanical California. Here were 
enough to supply the country round, let their demands be never 
so exorbitant. At all events we came home laden with flowers 
and roots, happy as the children we met, who were proceeding 
thither for nosegays to decorate their houses for the coming 
Easter-day, and anticipating great praise and envy from our 
botanical friends in distant counties for sending them such 
charming specimens. Now I began to see the poetical justice 
of old Herrick's remarks on their fleeting nature, for some of 
them were already beginning to wither " and die " 

" Away 
Like to the summer rain," 

and I remembered that the jolly old poet was some time rector of 
Dean Prior, in this county, and not, I should think, very far off; 
and had no doubt plenty of daffodils within the bounds of his 
own parish, which, I am sorry to say, he hated with all his heart, 
and never went near if he could help it, leaving his curate to do 



40 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

as much or as little as he liked in his absence. In those days I 
fear parochial work was not much thought of by the generality of 
the clergy. His poems, though generally too much of a Baccha- 
nalian and amorous character to be entirely pleasing, do, never- 
theless, occasionally display some exquisite touches of feeling, 
quite refreshing to meet with in the midst of so much, dare I say 
it? entire rubbish. Still I can never forgive him for running 
down Devonshire, and stigmatising it as "Dirty Devonshire," 
however justly he might have been provoked at the bad state of 
the roads at his time of day. However, mire or no mire, we 
stand by Devonshire ; and so will every one else who has enjoyed 
it so much as we did. 

We returned to our lodgings highly delighted with our walk ; 
and the next day, when recounting our adventures to a gentleman 
whom we met by accident, he exclaimed with unfeigned surprise, 
w What ! did you really go all the way to Maryknowle for those 
daffodils ? If you had but gone down the long walk behind my 
house, you might have gathered handfuls of beautiful double 
ones ! " It is useless to argue in favour of single flowers over 
double ones, so we smiled and walked on, wondering nevertheless 
how double daffodils should have so effectually asserted themselves 
in all gardens throughout the kingdom to the exclusion of their 
more elegant sisterhood. But some people have no taste, and it 
is useless to expect it of them. Just listen to an instance in 
point. 

A lady staying at the house of an old friend of the past 
generation, estimable in many respects, but by no means a lady's 
man, had brought home from her walk a delicate bouquet of 
periwinkles, violets, primroses, orchises, and a few early flowers of 
the pink Lychnis. These she encircled with fresh green fronds of 
the Acliantum Nigrum, and such like small ferns; and having 
arranged them to her heart's content, brought down her " thing 
of beauty," and placed it on the drawing-room table, where she 






MYRTLES AND ALOES. 41 

could look at it during the intervals of work or reading. I saw 
it myself, and very elegant it was ; and if the truth were told, I 
suspect they secretly hugged themselves on the superiority of 
their own taste over that of their less artistically-inclined neigh- 
bours. But pride must have a fall ; and in about an hour after- 
wards the door opens, and in marches their host, followed by a 
servant. " Take away that rubbish !" he said, pointing to the 
flowers. The servant obediently steps forth, seizes the cherished 
bouquet, and replaces it by a large bunch of single white stocks, 
tastefully arranged in a white earthen pie-dish, without the 
assistance of a single blade of green to relieve the eye. Of 
course remonstrance was vain, and the poor ladies were compelled 
to remove their unappreciated treasure to the sanctity of their 
own bed-room. ^_^ 

* * * -5f 

The subject of flowers has suggested one or two little hints on 
the construction of a nosegay, or " posy" as our ancestors more 
prettily and quaintly called it, which may prove useful to those 
who would avoid bad taste. It is admitted that no modern 
drawing-room is furnished without its carefully-arranged bouquet. 
What lady indeed would not resent the idea of such a thing ? but 
as there may be circumstances under which garden flowers cannot 
be obtained, I would venture to suggest the following, which 
called forth much admiration from a small party which I once 
gave under great floral disadvantages. 

I arranged round the edge of a tall glass vase a few primrose 
leaves, then a circle of the flowers themselves ; next a bunch of 
wild hyacinths on their long stalks, so arranged as to form a cone, 
the apex of which was composed of some blades of a fine yellowish 
green grass generally found in company with the primroses, and 
which, streaming about in their own elegant curves, effectually 
took off any appearance of formality. As spring is coming on I 

G 



42 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

advise my readers to try it, and see if our fields will not afford a 
bouquet as charming as can be produced from the more refined 
conservatory. The idea of making such common things subserve 
the purposes of elegance may not have occurred, but if any one 
wishes to obtain a signal triumph of nature over art, let her try 
the effect of a large bouquet of wild grasses placed in the grate 
when fires are no longer required, and she will be amply repaid 
for the trouble of collecting them by the expressions of admiration 
which they will infallibly call forth ; and henceforward the doom 
of cut paper and knitted stove veils will be considered sealed. 

A word or two more on the arrangement of flowers, and I have 
done. I should like ladies to show more taste than to compose 
bouquets entirely of flowers without leaves. Does Nature ever do 
the like ? Look at her proportion of flowers and leaves, and then 
imagine a rose-bush all roses ! The same criticism applies to the 
productions of some of our most accomplished flower painters, 
(though, all honour to the Miss Mutries, they have broken through 
the rule), who seem to ignore the existence of anything green. 
There is indeed great art displayed by the Covent Garden pro- 
fessors, and very scientific effects they certainly produce; but 
their productions, although on right principles as to colour, are so 
insufferably formal that I for one cannot tolerate them. 

As a rule, I am* apt to think that two flowers, or flowers of 
two sorts well contrasted and with sufficient foliage, are elegant 
enough for any one. Topsy's inherent taste led her to the 
selection of a pomegranate and a jasmine. Can any one improve 
upon it ? 

If a large ornament for a table is wanted it is a good and safe 
rule to take the three primitive colours or their nearest represent- 
atives, and arrange them for the centre, placing the other flowers 
around them at the greatest possible distance from the colours 
which they too nearly resemble — an unavoidable propinquity of 
colour may be overcome by placing a green leaf or white flower 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 43 

between : but let your nosegay by all means possess the three 
primitives, or at least two of them, and the tiniest morsel of the 
third will be sufficient, if scarce. Surround the whole with leaves 
of one kind, but belonging to one of the flowers in the group ; 
and believe me you will be satisfied with your work. 

Very effective groups are made by placing together all the 
flowers of one colour, which has something of the effect of 
one composed of a few large flowers; and it is far preferable 
to the scattered appearance produced by putting in flowers 
without any definite rule. But by all means secure as many 
dark flowers as possible, both to brighten the others by contrast, 
and to afford a resting place for the eye. Eor this purpose some 
of the dullest and most uninteresting to the general observer are 
invaluable to the professed fleuriste; for on having plenty of 
them the brilliancy of the group principally depends. 

Try my plan if you really love flowers ; but if not, meddle not 
with them, nor with anything else for which you have no love — 
I mean, of course, in matters of taste ; for alas ! many things for 
which we have no inclination must be attempted if we would 
prove ourselves worthy combatants in the battle of life. 

Euskin says that no artist ought to paint that for which he 
has no love, and very beautifully does he describe the treatment 
of the Oxalis Acetosella or Wood Sorrel by Era Angelico, adding 
this elegant note, which we liked to remember when we beheld 
its delicate foliage during that pleasant spring-time covering the 
earth with its verdant carpet : — " The triple leaf of this plant, and 
white flower stained purple, probably gave it a strange typical 
interest among the Christian painters. Angelico, in using its 
leaves mixed with daisies in the foreground of his Crucifixion, was 
perhaps thinking of its peculiar power of quenching thirst." A 
note from the printer makes this suggestive addition, " I rather 
imagine that his thoughts, if he had any beyond the mystic form 



44 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

of the leaf, were with the Italian name, Allelujah, as if the very 
flowers round the Cross were giving glory to God." 

Ruskin adds that " in the valleys of Dauphine, it is called 
' Pain du Bon Dieu,' and it whitens the grass and rocks of the 
hill crest like manna." It has certainly always been a favonrite 
plant with the religious, and disputes with the shamrock the 
honour of having been selected by St. Patrick as an illustration 
of the Trinity in his preaching to the Pagan Irish. 

How much more interesting is the appropriation to plants of 
such names, or even of some of the more legendary ones, than the 
heathen appellations by which they are frequently known ! To 
be sure Iris, Adonis, Hyacinth, Circea, and such like, will convey 
some poetical ideas, but the 'Old Gods/ as Thorwaldsen called 
them, are going out, and their names are surely not comparable 
with the English names of our rural favourites. Daisy ! Primrose 
Peerless ! Sweet Cicely ! Cuckoo flower ! Ladies' Traces ! Eye 
Bright ! A poem might be written on each of them ! But 
Allelujah ! Gethsemane ! Star of Bethlehem ! what a world of 
thought crowds on our minds as we utter them ! And even if 
they produce but a transient remembrance — alas, too transient ! 
surely no one can be the worse for it. Gethsemane, the scene of 
so much suffering for our sake, may with advantage occur to our 
minds, bent as they are too exclusively on our own pleasure even 
in things lawful. It is like coming upon a religious picture by 
Albert Durer or Mabuse, fresh from the glitter of our own 
Academy, though it is but justice to admit that the feeling of the 
present race of exhibitors is greatly in advance of what it was a 
few years since. Yet who could study Landseer's pictures of 
canine wisdom, Grant's portraits of gentlemanly men, Roberts' 
transcripts of Ancient Egypt, or still more glorious Rome, without 
pausing awe-struck at Hunt's " Light of the World," which even 
if it expressed no more than " Behold, I stand at the door, and 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 45 

knock/' could scarcely fail of striking some careless heart which 

had not till then responded to the invitation to open the door to 

the Heavenly Visitor. 

" Soul, from thy casement look ! and thou shalt see 
How he persists to knock and wait for thee." 

Thoughts such as these strike me frequently when visiting my 
greatest delight — an exhibition of paintings, and how wide a 
sphere of usefulness have our painters before them if they only 
knew their proper mission ! 



°~A 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE REBECCA. 

Salcombe, as has already been explained, is exclusively given up 
to maritime men and their affairs; indeed, I believe that the 
" Salcombes " quite agree with the writer of the seamen's song, 

" Oh ! how I pity all poor folks 
Who have the ill luck to live on shore ! " 

though being a landswoman, I take upon myself to assert that 
" tiles and chimney-pots" do not often fly about even in the most 
violent weather ; and besides, if the open sea be such a remarkably 
safe place, why do mariners invariably run for harbour when there 
is any chance of getting one ? 

But this is nothing to the purpose, and I remark on it only to 
show how soon one can become interested in surrounding affairs, 
though at first sight they appear inexplicable. There was no 
wonder then that the arrival of the Russian barque was almost as 
anxiously expected by us as by the rest of the town, with whose 
interests we were at that time so completely identified. 

Week after week was this vessel delayed ; indeed we began to 
suspect that she had been metamorphosed into the Flying Dutch- 
man, so contradictory were the statements we heard about her. 
She had been taken in the war on her return from St. Ubes, laden 
with salt, and not being able to get into a friendly port, fell a 
prize to our British tars. It is terrible to think of the conse- 
quences which might have arisen to the health of the Russian 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 47 

nation had the war been prolonged, for they are entirely dependent 
on other nations for this necessary commodity. 

The barque, having been captured, was sold by order to a com- 
pany of Salcombe men, of whom, physically speaking at least, our 
friend Captain Cove was the greatest. Day after day we watched 
the captain's broad back as he stood by the low wall which divided 
the narrow street from the shipwrights' yard below, where the best 
view of the mouth of the harbour was attainable, with his tele- 
scope in full play, making his eyes and his burly arms ache to 
no purpose. I fancy I see the whole row of pilots and preventive 
men off duty who use to stand on each side of him, all equally 
intent on one object — the Eussian barque. Their faces I might 
not perhaps recognise ; but their backs ! — there was not a patch 
in their well-mended jackets that I did not knows^Still, all this 
looking out did not bring the vessel within the range of their 
telescopes. Others thinking to get an earlier sight would walk a 
little way up the street, and insert their telescopes into an oblique 
aperture which they had got leave to make in the obdurate wall 
which formed the street boundary of the Cliff House garden; 
whilst others would saunter down to the cliff overhanging the 
castle, and look out there, still in the same position. 

At last, one day, when we had somewhat forgotten the general 
anxiety, she appeared in sight ; and I believe we were amongst 
the first who saw her as she majestically sailed round the Bolt 
Head, escorted into the harbour by the ever-watchful pilot 
Jarvis, and finally anchored in the river in full sight of our 
lodgings. She looked superb, her three masts and proportionate 
size of hull giving her a most decided superiority over all the 
vessels lying in the harbour ; and, if the truth were known, not 
a little griping to the pride of the naval architects of the place. 
However, I am sure they have no cause for shame, for I question 
if the ship yards of Salcombe would allow of building so large a 
vessel. Besides, was not the Zouave built in Mr. Bunker's yard, 



48 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

under our very eyes ? and that, too, for Liverpool owners, who 
will have the best of everything ; and did not the Caroline reflect 
great glory on her builder, Mr. Vivian? To be sure she did; 
and it showed no lack of spirit in the Salcombe men to buy and 
charter the Russian barque. 

Many were our conjectures as to what purpose she was to be 
applied, as she lay for weeks at the mercy of the shipwrights who 
overhauled her, still a great ornament to the Salcombe water. 
She was always a beautiful study to an artist's eye : sometimes 
her rigging appeared etched on a clear sky, as if by the finest 
graving tool : at other times, with a dark cloud behind her, all 
her lines would be shown in white, and the unpainted wood would 
glow in the brightest sienna colours. Many a lesson in rigging 
did our good friend Mr. Strong give us on this one subject : I 
almost began to see some sense in the numberless ropes which he 
pointed out, and could at least clearly distinguish between the 
standing and the hauling rigging. But everything has an end : 
even the slow motions of the shipwrights ceased ; the Rebecca was 
pronounced fit for sea, and we were invited to inspect her pre- 
vious to her departure. 

One bright afternoon the polite Captain Hill came for us in his 
boat : his men rowed us back to the vessel, and with some 
trepidation we ascended her lofty sides. To say the truth, 1 did 
not much fancy the ladder which we had to climb, which was 
rather slippery looking, as well as perpendicular in its arrange- 
ment. But I did what others did ; and like many other people, 
by the help ^of a push behind and a pull before, succeeded in 
reaching the deck. I am always nervous on such occasions ; and 
as soon as I found myself safe on board, I began to anticipate the 
difficulties of getting back again. 

To be sure, there was not a great deal to see ; but Captain Hill 
showed us the private cabin of the unfortunate Russian captain, 
who seemed to have had a taste for the arts, as a large quantity 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 49 

of painting brushes and other drawing materials wa's found in his 
lockers. I am sure I pitied the poor man, well knowing as I do 
how awkward one feels without sketching materials, and how 
invariably a subject appears which is especially attractive at such 
times. The thing which struck me most was the immense size of 
the hull, which was quite undivided and clear for the reception of 
merchandise; and we learnt that she was to be chartered for 
Balaklava — rather a different destination from what was intended 
by her original owners. The captain appeared flattered by the 
presence of ladies on board his vessel, and with characteristic 
hospitality brought out all his provisions, consisting of the most 
enormous piece of corned beef and a bottle of brandy. 

Whilst the others were walking about on the deck I had a 
little conversation with the young mate, who waS<tooking very- 
downcast, having just married a wife, who could not accompany 
him, and he was expecting to sail next day ! And this is the 
cause of rather a singular state of society, in consequence of the 
number of young married women who were keeping house alone, 
during the long voyages of their liege lords, and truth compels 
me to state that a large amount of gossip was the consequence ; 
for it is not reasonable to suppose that a young girl, who a week 
before was not considered sufficiently staid to live away from the 
maternal roof, should after a fortnight's experience of married 
life become a very severe matron, the cares of the household not 
being of sufficient weight to supply the necessary ballast to her 
character. So it is no wonder that such knots of young women 
should be seen, all in deep conference on their neighbours' affairs, 
or settling among themselves the fashions for the coming season, 
or speculating whether Jack Jarvis is really so fond of i?anny 
Coles as people say he is, interspersed with a few remarks en 
passant on the ladies who persisted in wearing such worn or 
splashed dresses, and would carry such baskets full of dirty sea- 
weed ! However, let those laugh who win ! and I suspect that 

H 



50 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

we derived a greater share of pleasant occupation from such 
apparently unpropitious soil than the more smartly dressed ladies 
who congregated around their clean doorsteps. 

Sometimes in our visits amongst the poor we were saddened 
by the detail of the wholesale loss of relatives and friends by 
shipwreck or other disasters at sea. The loss of a whole family, 
consisting of husband, son, and brothers, was not an uncommon 
tale; and the natural desire of relatives to be in the same ship 
conduced to this sad fatality. But I suppose that 

" Men must work and women must weep, 
Where there's little to earn and many to keep." 

Surely the worldly wisdom conveyed in the caution against 
putting too many eggs in one basket might with propriety be 
carried out in such cases. And yet I believe the possibility of 
meeting with a similar fate never for an instant deterred these 
brave men from their destined line of life ; nor do I think it ever 
entered their thoughts. 

But I am wandering away from the Rebecca, as the Eussian 
barque was christened by her new owners. The wind at this 
season of the year was decidedly unpropitious for getting the 
vessel out of the harbour, and week after week she lay, ornamental 
enough no doubt, but profitless to her owners; though if the 
truth be told, the delay was not altogether distasteful to the love- 
sick mate. At last the great captain got impatient, a steam-tug 
was sent for from Plymouth, and the Rebecca had to submit to 
the indignity — for such it always seems to a great vessel — of 
being towed out of the harbour like any other ordinary craft, and 
— the next morning the wind changed ! 

Can any one explain why human patience so often fails just 
before the wished-for event takes place ? Did you never expect 
a letter from your favourite correspondent, wait for it day after 
day, then get desperate and write to know the reason of the delay, 
and afterwards find that the long-looked-for letter had crossed 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 51 

your own ? How many examples of the same sort of thing occur 
to every one! I begin to think there is some sort of animal 
magnetism in this last case, and that the old saying " Talk of/' 
&c, is founded on the general experience of mankind, and, like 
many other proverbs, not to be slighted. 

Some people seem to be endowed with a remarkable sort of 
prescience, for which it is difficult to account, except by supposing 
that they reflect more on the past, and are likely, therefore, to be 
better judges of the future, and everybody has experienced some 
perhaps ludicrous instances of it; but it is by no means safe 
to rely upon, and indeed, we (most of us at least) manage the 
present so badly that we are not fit to be intrusted with the 
future. I used to think when young, how pleasant it would be 
to have the power of consigning the key of our private thoughts 
to some dear friend, who could thus know what we feel impossible 
to utter of affection or tenderness : but I have lived long enough 
to see how ruinous would be such a gift in our present imperfect 
state. The key might be given to one unworthy of our confidence, 
who might refuse or neglect to return it, or who might make a 
bad use of the knowledge thereby acquired, and daily do I see 
cause to admire the wisdom which has withheld the power of 
making ourselves miserable — perhaps for life : but it is strange 
to remember the vagaries of our youth, and to observe how 
maturer age discards one by one the fancies which we had 
deemed too bright to fade. Castle building, though a danger- 
ous propensity, is an infallible indication of character, and the 
style of its architecture may be studied with advantage by those 
who would arrive at a fair estimate of their moral stature. " The 
mind's the measure of the man," says one of our great moralists, 
and if so, I fear some of us would cut but a dwarfish figure in 
the magnificent edifices which have cost us so much valuable time 
and thought to rear. Still, imagination is a gift, and a necessary 
part of our mental constitution, and may, if discreetly cultivated, 



5£ MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

and not too implicitly trusted, prove of the utmost advantage to our- 
selves and others. Strictly speaking, the slightest departure from 
matter of fact trenches upon its dominions, but how could we get 
on if " matter of fact " were all our mental food ? "We might as 
well go and shut up house with Mr. Bounderby in Stone Lodge 
all the days of our life ! 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE WRECK. 

Apropos of ships, I must not neglect to chronicle the wreck of a 
vessel laden with lemons, which came ashore one stormy night in 
the beginning of March, and which, although not on our side of 
the estuary, made quite a sensation in our quiet lifet^pur landlady 
told me of this the first thing in the morning, and having a great 
curiosity to see it, I went over the ferry to my friend at Portle- 
mouth Rectory, and made an arrangement to meet me at a certain 
point on the top of the hill near the church, where, in addition to 
the fine prospect of the mouth of the harbour, I saw for the first 
time in my life water running up hill. This fact, which might 
perhaps be discredited by the dwellers in more inland situations, 
can nevertheless be easily accounted for; for the water came 
from a stream which had its origin in the church-yard of Portle- 
mouth, and from thence making its way to the sea encountered 
a small hillock (of course lower than its source), which it was 
compelled to ascend in order to pursue its way to the lowest level. 
I never saw it before, but I am informed that it is by no means 
an uncommon sight in these hilly localities. Near this spot 
my friend's children were awaiting me, and their conversation 
amused me long. We talked of flowers which were to appear 
when the late spring should permit, and of wonderful sea shells 
and animals which had been seen by one of them, who intends 
to be a second Professor Harvey at the least. One of them pro- 



54 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

mised to find me a Glacex Maritima (alas ! the dear little fellow- 
has been himself since gathered by the " reaper whose name is 
Death ") which he knew to grow on the rocks, and another had 
seen the most astonishing sea anemones. So I promised them 
an expedition to Splat Cove when the days should get longer. 
Splat Cove seemed a sort of El Dorado with them, significant of 
treasures untold in the way of natural history, which although 
heard of, they had never hoped to reach, and their mamma was 
overwhelmed with descriptions, painted couleur de rose, when 
she soon after made her appearance, laden with thoughtful kind- 
nesses for a poor cripple boy, whose existence seemed to be passed 
in a linen basket, which served him for bed and sofa. Poor Sam 
Lamble ! I have often thought of him since, and heard occasion- 
ally of his welfare, grown out of his linen basket into something 
better, we trust, but still I fear a cripple for life. How little can 
we who have the free use of our limbs enter into his sad circum- 
stances ; and yet what compensation seems to be granted to such 
sufferers in their contented and quiet state of mind ! I am 
inclined to think that a very fretful person could not live long in 
such a state. 

With my friend's arrival the conversation improved; for, the 
daughter of a naturalist, she had early fostered in her children the 
knowledge and love of all inanimate objects of creation, believing 
that in the end it would be found that 

" He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small." 

Many were the objects which she pointed out to us, and one or 
two plants are inseparably connected in my mind with her. To 
her I am indebted for my first introduction to the beautiful 
Chrvsoplenium, or golden saxifrage, very common in all damp 
places in Devonshire, and afterwards also to the wild flax, which 
I had never expected to have seen. "We all walked together for 
some time at first, till the conversation got beyond the children's 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 55 

reach, and they sought more amusement in their own : then we 
set to work, as ladies are said to do, to " mend the world," or at 
least, darn some of the thin places. A few stitches certainly were 
set, but I fear our work would not stand much wear and tear; 
nevertheless, if we could but persuade society to think with us, 
its practice would be " never too late to mend." 

Our walk was a long one, leading us past the preventive station 
at Eickham, called Gaytor Eock Station, and from thence along a 
lower level of the cliff, still however high above the water, to a 
place called Moor Sand, so called because there is so little of it, 
I suppose. But the longest walk has an end, and soon the shouts 
of the children, who had run on before, announced that the wreck 
was in sight. More people than so scattered a neighbourhood 
appeared capable of producing thronged the cliff, which, rising 
nearly perpendicularly from the sea, forbade any approach to the 
vessel. There she lay resistlessly tossing from side to side against 
the rocks, her seams opening wider and wider at each roll of the 
waves, and affording larger apertures for the merchandise to 
escape. Every wave we knew was bringing the tide higher and 
higher, and that was the time fixed upon by those learned in such 
matters for seeing her hopelessly dashed to pieces. The poor 
crew of six men, who had escaped only with their lives, sat 
cowering on the rocks, beholding the loss of all their worldly 
wealth, as chest after chest was washed from between her gaping 
timbers, and who knows what precious memories those chests 
might contain for some of them? The afternoon of exquisite 
brightness seemed ill to accord with the work of destruction 
going on under our eyes. The sea was covered in places with 
lemons, which had formed the chief freight of the ill-fated vessel, 
amounting in value they said to £2,000 ! and these gave a singu- 
larly golden hue to some parts of it ; a few boats were trying to 
pick up what they could, but they would be valueless for purposes 
of merchandise; whilst the air was perfumed with the scent of 



56 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

bergamot, some cases of which formed part of the cargo. It was 
a truly pitiful sight, for a vessel appears to have so much that is 
human about her, and it is this, perhaps, which warrants the 
feminine appellatives so constantly given. I know not otherwise 
wherefore, but it is certainly a more affecting sight to behold the 
wreck of a ship than to see a steam engine or a stage coach in 
difficulties, and most people will agree to the truth of this propo- 
sition. At all events it would be difficult to imagine a more 
pictorial sight than was afforded by the wreck and those who 
came to witness it. Several people came from a distance on 
horseback, not the least picturesque of whom was my young 
friend A., with her fairy-like figure mounted on a rough white 
pony, appropriately named Pixie. The happiness and animation 
of the child were in striking contrast with the desolation and 
sadness around her: she would have formed a good figure in 
the foreground of one of Landseer's pictures, of which, indeed, 
she greatly reminded me. 

Returning by a different road, we found fine specimens of the 
last year's fronds of the Osmunda Eegalis, the noblest of British 
ferns, and on a steep bank, the glassy threads of the Marchantia, 
just beginning to germinate. The Osmunda grows to the height 
of six feet in some places ; I had not often met with it, and so 
was the more pleased at its discovery. We passed Portlemouth 
Church, dedicated to St. Onolaus, a very unusual name in the 
calendar I am inclined to think, probably one of the lights of the 
Ancient British Church, like many in the neighbouring county of 
Cornwall — such as St. Enoder, St. Ladoca, St. Erm, &c. — of 
whom only the name remains to testify to the veneration in which 
they were formerly held. And such alone, in many other cases, 
are the monuments of the men to whom we are indebted for the 
existence of our beloved Church, many of whom lived and died 
the death of martyrs in behalf of what we justly esteem our dearest 
possession. At the western end of the Church stands a lych gate, 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 57 

not uncommon in Devonshire, though not usual elsewhere; and in 
that churchyard lies the body of a man whose murderer affords the 
last recorded instance of the infliction of burning as a punishment 
for the crime of poisoning. The epitaph is curious, and runs thus : 

" Through poison strong he was cut off, 
And brought to death at last : 
It was by his apprentice girl, 

On whom there's sentence past. 
O, may all people warning take, 
For she was burned to a stake ! " 

The tombstone bears date May 25, 1782; and the execution of 
the criminal was performed at Exeter; but, in her case, the 
burning did not take place until after death by hanging. Pearful 
as this sounds, it is some improvement on the punishment of 
boiling to death, which was enacted by statute 23 Henry VIII, 
1532. This Act was occasioned by seventeen persons having 
been poisoned by Rouse, the Bishop of Rochester's cook. Mar- 
garet Davie, a young woman, suffered in a similar manner for a 
similar crime, in 1541. (See Haydn's Dictionary of Dates.) 

The Church contains one of those elaborate screens which are 
so frequently seen in that neighbourhood; and the font is also 
worthy of observation. 

Should these pages meet the eye of a botanist, it may be plea- 
sant to know that the somewhat rare dadder (Cuscuta Epithymum) 
grows in profusion on the furze bushes on the top of this hill, 
continuing their beauty when the flowers are faded, by the delicate 
little pink blossoms, connected by filaments of the same colour, 
which entwine the stems like threads of silk. It is always a 
marvel how the Cuscuta contrives to exist on such a bare main- 
tenance as the dry-looking furze affords, but it strikes me as an 
emblem of contentedness, 

" Willing to give thanks, and live 
On the least that Heaven may give j " 

and the wonder is not lessened by observing how plump the little 
threads are, as full of sap as if they throve on the most succulent 

I 



6$ MYRTLES AND ALOES. * 

nourishment. Here too we saw the hairy violet, but its rarity 
does not compensate for its want of perfume. Nearly all the 
Devonshire violets are destitute of fragrance, a circumstance for 
which I am at a loss to account, as well as for the total absence 
of nightingales from a county which I should have thought so 
particularly favourable for them.* 

Did any one ever hear of nightingales being a nuisance? 
Probably not; but here is an instance which is well authenti- 
cated. Once upon a time the servants at Ditchingham Hall, in 
Suffolk, gave notice to leave in a body. An inquiry being made 
as to the cause of such general dissatisfaction, their mistress was 
gravely informed that they found sleep to be impossible, because 
" them nightingales made such a noise I" I can partially confirm 
this story from the experience which we had of their vocal powers 
when we resided in Bedfordshire : it was really intolerable to those 
who wanted sleep. 

The effect of the lemon wreck, as we used to designate it, was 
to make that fruit very cheap in Salcombe for weeks afterwards. 
Every child you met was sucking a lemon with apparently as great 
satisfaction as if it were an orange. To such a pass did things 
arrive that fifty for sixpence were freely offered by those who had 
been lucky enough to secure a great many. We made a good 
stock of marmalade on the strength of it, and greatly did our 
friend Mr. Strong approve of our manufacture, though when I 
took him a jar of it he politely told me that he did not think 
I could have made anything so good! 

* Since writing the above, I have read in White's " Selborne " his 
opinion that the deficiency of nightingales in Devonshire is to be attributed 
to the circumstance that they come from the Continent, cross the sea at the 
narrowest part, and do not penetrate so far into the country. 



,4*fc 




J&rcsvoti - 




Vu*, j rwru Maa^ **** 



U--' 



CHAPTER IX. 

TORCROSS. 

We had heard much of the beauty of Torcross, and had long 
determined to see it, but the difficulty was always great, as no 
conveyance was to be hired, and there were obstacles of another 
sort to be overcome. At last it was suggested that we should try 
to approach it by water ; so having made friends with one of the 
pretty boys with whom Salcombe abounds^ve sallied forth one fine 
April day to see what it was that attracted so much admiration. 

Now for want of a better, the boy was to be our guide, but as 
he knew nothing beyond a place called Erogmore, which lay at 
the end of one of the little creeks I have described as running up 
from the estuary into the country, it might be thought that he 
would not prove of much use ; but only the natives of the place 
are aware of the precise bed of the stream, which they call " the 
lake," and which is so capricious in its situation that a person 
unacquainted with it might easily run aground, and there be left 
to the mercy of a higher tide. This " lake" alone has water in it 
during all states of the tide, and sometimes that is little enough : 
we were therefore obliged to be very punctual in the times of our 
departure and returning, especially the latter, as we heard of 
instances in which people had been compelled to sleep in their 
boat all night. 

Our boat was a heavy old lumbering affair, more suited to 
stormy seas than to inland navigation, twice too large for the 
party, but the only one to be procured ; we therefore started in 
it — my husband, myself, E., and the boy to row, and L. to steer 



60 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

according to the boy's directions. I suspect the youth's sense of 
propriety prevented his making any remarks upon our manage- 
ment of the oars, and it might perhaps have been humbling to 
overhear his comments when he returned to his family; but, as 
ignorance on this subject is bliss, we have the satisfaction of 
believing that our performance was unexceptionable. 

With some little trouble we effected a landing on the shelving 
shore of Frogmore, after a row of four miles, and soon after started 
off into the country for a walk of about four more. Now Frog- 
more is just the sort of place I should not like to live in, for the 
water, which is pretty enough when the tide is at the highest, has 
an uncomfortable habit of disappearing almost entirely, and leaving 
in its place flat shoals of mud twice in the day, which are always 
sure to be the times when it is wanted to look its best : such at 
least has always been my experience in all places affected by the 
tide. Contrast, for instance, the lovely view from Clifton, with 
the rocks reflected in a full river, and the same view with the tide 
down, and only a small gutter of yellow-coloured water struggling 
along in the centre. The same may be said of Chepstow, where 
the want of water is still more apparent. 

But to return to Erogmore, which perhaps is a delightful place 
to those who reside there, though it seemed so dreary to us. 
There seemed to be some little traffic in the village, as we observed 
several malthouses or cider stores built by the side of the river for 
the convenience of the water carriage; there was also a rather 
good bridge across the river, but beyond it there was no navi- 
gation. Many aquatic birds, such as gulls, herons, and curlews, 
were feeding on the muddy shores, making the most of their time 
before the tide should cover them. Dotterels also and smaller 
birds were there in numbers, sandpipers I think. The flight of a 
group of dotterels is very beautiful ; when turned from the sun 
their grey colour renders them nearly invisible, but when their 
breasts receive his rays the sky appears sprinkled with steel beads, 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 61 

so glittering do they appear. Marine vegetation had gradually 
ceased from the time we left Salcombe, and nothing was seen save 
the sea-weed with its golden fruit, and one or two of the sorts 
which can exist in brackish water ; but the bed of the " lake" 
was filled with the Zostera Marina waving about like long grass 
on a windy day. This flowering grass, for such it is, forms the 
stuffing of mattresses sold by upholsterers under the name of Alva 
Marina, and comfortable and elastic bedding it makes. How 
many useful things are overlooked for want of observation ! Our 
Trench neighbours are certainly beforehand with us in this respect. 
Many a poor person, with her family, lies on a wretched bed, 
because she will not take the trouble to collect dry beech leaves, 
which cost only the trouble of gathering, and would itself form a 
-healthy and happy amusement to the little ones who are to sleep 
on them. The great scarcity of garderPproduce induced us this 
spring to try what our botanical books recommended so strongly 
—the gathering of the young shoots of hops, which abounded in 
the hedges, as a substitute for asparagus ; and no one who has 
not tasted them will believe how good they were. The leaves of 
the sea beet, which abounded on the cliffs, were also tried as a 
substitute for spinach, and found to be nearly as good as the 
genuine article. I suspect that other people knew our secret, for 
I saw a man near Kingsbridge gathering them on the rocky side 
of the estuary. When to these we add water-cresses, which were 
everywhere plentiful, and samphire, good for pickles, I think a bill 
of fare will have been made out sufficiently tempting for the 
hermit who boasts 

" No flocks that range the valley free 

To slaughter I condemn, 
Taught by the Power that pities me, 

I learn to pity them ; 
But from the mountain's grassy side 

A guiltless feast I bring, 
A scrip with herbs and roots supplied, 

And water from the spring." > 



62 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

At all events, let those who are sceptical taste and try for them- 
selves, and if they are at as great a loss as we were during that 
spring for fresh vegetables, they will be thankful to find a kitchen 
garden by the way-side. We have since tried nettles, as we 
advise others to do, and can affirm that they are excellent. 

Apropos of good things, I must not forget to confirm Mr. 
Gosse's statement of the excellence of stewed sea anemones, 
which E. tried on his authority, and found to be delicious. 
Nothing like getting over a prejudice ! 



*' The day was placid in its going, 
To a lingering sweetness bound, 
Like a river in its flowing " 

Such might have been the description of the first really spring- 
like days we had known, as we walked along the now dusty road, 
with the hedges newly clothed in green, and the spring flowers 
bursting out at their feet. The ruins of a large house which we 
passed, and which had been destroyed by fire, contrasted sadly 
with the gaiety of the scene. But Nature had not left even this 
barren spot uncared for. Lichens of every shade of black, grey, 
and yellow, adorned the dreary pile, and seemed endeavouring to 
make up for what the fire had destroyed. In the chinks of the 
decaying walls might be found the delicate Saxifraga Tridactylites, 
turned to a bright scarlet by the cold winds, very tiny in exposed 
positions, but growing three or four inches high in more sheltered 
localities. From its small size and short time of growing, it is 
frequently overlooked : its flower bears a close resemblance to that 
favourite of city gardens, London Pride, to which indeed it is 
nearly allied. 

As we proceeded, some parts of the road became agricultural 
and common place by comparison, till a little way before we 
reached the village of Stokenham. At that place the character 
of the road totally changed, and we came upon such clusters of 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 63 

primroses as we seldom see. A small stream running by the side 
of the road reflected their blossoms on its dark bosom, and 
doubled their number; and one wreath in particular, with its 
reflections, appeared to form a crescent of the most delicate stars. 
Now as we were not of the same turn of mind as Wordsworth's 
Peter Bell, of whom it said, 

" In vain through every changeful year, 
Did Nature lead him as before ; 
A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more " — 

we lingered long by the brook's side lost in admiration, greatly 
to the astonishment of the youth who accompanied us, and who 
was doubtless of the opinion that it was " nothing more," for he 
betook himself to the hermit's temperance banquet, and drank as 
only boys can drink who are very thirsty f^f. never see a bunch 
of primroses in a similar situation without recalling these, and I 
firmly believe that 

" Long as there's a sun that sets 
Primroses shall have their glory," 

for they are certainly amongst the loveliest gems of Flora's crown. 
Milton's " rathe " primrose means " early." It is a Saxon word, 
and, like many others if unexplained, sticks in one's mind, perhaps 
for life, a small lump of ignorance which never quite wears away 
under the friction of more newly acquired ideas. 

The Church of Stokenham which we were approaching looked 
very well with its fine tower, to which was added the usual supple- 
mentary turret for the staircase, not on the south-west corner as is 
usual in the churches of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, but in 
the centre of the south side, and, I think, not with so good an 
effect; for it gives too much of a swollen appearance to the tower, 
and does not show so well from the surrounding landscape as the 
Bedfordshire turrets do, which form the staple of many of our 
picturesque illustrations. But I observed most of the fine stone 



64 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

towers in this part of Devonshire built in the way I have described, 
and there seems to be a kind of fashion in certain districts. For 
instance, from the window of the room in which I write I can see 
eight spires, that of Higham Ferrers being the best known and 
the finest, whilst in Devonshire it might be difficult to find one. 
In Norfolk, where flint prevails, and stone is scarce, round towers 
are frequent, or square towers with stone buttresses. Soon after 
passing the Church and Parsonage, very rurally situated, we came 
upon a wide prospect of mingled land and water — most exquisite 
in its aerial tints of delicate greens, greys, and blues, softened by 
the distance to a kind of pearly white. The view was bounded 
on the left by a high ridge of hills, and on the right by the land 
running out to Start Point. A low flat extent of sandy country 
was intersected by a long lake of fresh water, full of reeds and 
other aquatic plants, and famous for its fishing and duck shoot- 
ing. This is called Slapton Lea, and is one of the most interesting 
features in the neighbourhood, and I should think is nearly unique 
of its kind. It is about two miles in length, and is separated 
from the beach by a long ridge of gravel and stones which forms 
a road, so that the passenger may hear and see the foaming waves 
on the one hand, whilst the other presents all the unruffled 
features of an inland lake. The naturalist or sportsman would 
be charmed by witnessing the return of the flocks of wild swans, 
teal, widgeons, and the like, which frequent these waters, and by 
listening to their cries as they flutter down to their well remem- 
bered haunts. The Lea is full of fresh-water fish, which afford 
sport of a different kind from the rocky streams prevalent in most 
parts of the county; but this is not unfrequently interrupted by 
the incursions of the sea during an unusually high tide, which 
sweeps over the narrow barrier and destroys the fish, rendering 
the mere almost empty until it is again supplied with spawn 
brought in by the tributary springs. It is at all times well worthy 
of a visit, and, I am glad we did not leave the neighbourhood 
without seeing it. 



MYRTLES AXD ALOES. 65 

Passing round the end of the mere we reached the little village 
of Torcross, where the scene again changed completely. No 
longer any symptoms of vegetation, but a blue sea, dotted all 
over with bright brown sails. I am not a sufficiently good 
geologist to pronounce upon the rocks, nor have I a proper book 
at hand to make up my deficiencies, but they were of a delicate 
silvery grey, occasionally quite dazzling in the sun, and might 
therefore be called micaceous ; and seemed more solid and square 
in their forms than those at Salcombe. The beach, if such it 
might be called, was entirely composed of stones of the most 
uncomfortable nature for walking : at every step we sank nearly 
a foot deep, getting our shoes full of pebbles, and gaining a 
lively notion of the penance of walking to Walsingham Shrine 
with peas in the shoes without the chance of boiling them. Not- 
withstanding this disadvantage, which may lae avoided by keeping 
on the cliff, where the view is unquestionably finer, we thought 
Torcross a very sweet place, and are glad not to have omitted it. 

Of course no sea-weeds were to be found, for they could make 
no attachment to such a shifting foundation, but their place 
was well supplied by many of the common zoophytes, such as 
Sertularias, Plumularias, Grantia, and the like, and we found 
fine specimens of the Jania and other Corallines : they were very 
elegant but stony-looking, like all the products of Torcross. 
Indeed all nature seemed to have been subjected to some petrify- 
ing process, and it needed but little imagination to fancy that 
some Gorgon of olden time had frowned the whole place into 
stone. A few star-fish, and the shells of crabs, seemed the ceno- 
taphs of nature in this dreary abode, whilst the never-failing sea 
gulls hovered about in search of any waifs and strays which might 
be floating on the waters. However, thanks to an artistic eye, 
there is always something to sketch even in the most uninviting 
places, so whilst resting myself, I made a study of a bit of rock, 
which always pleases me when I look at it, though there may not 

K 



66 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

be much in it to the eye of a casual observer. The power of 
perceiving beauty however small, in common objects, is a subject 
of daily thankfulness, and I do think that the cultivation of ar- 
tistic feeling, in however slight a degree, ought to be attended to 
by those to whose lot the education of youth falls, for it affords a 
fund of real enjoyment throughout life. There is hardly a scene, 
however humble, that does not offer some gratification to the eye 
of taste, whilst the endeavour to depict it always creates a quiet 
employment, which has at least the merit of not annoying 
any one else, and lays up a store of tangible reminiscences for 
future days. Whilst the rest of our party were strolling about, 
looking for specimens, or finding u sermons in stones," my 
thoughts reverted to the green and pastoral country in which 
till that time I had always lived, and the contrast which it 
afforded to present circumstances. Many a dear friend could I 
have wished to have had with me, to enjoy what was so truly 
charming to myself, but that being impossible I could only entrust 
them all to^ that Gracious Power which had led me all my life 
long, and brought me even to that place which of all others I 
enjoyed. One, alas ! of those then present to my mind, " is not/' 
but it is a comfort to me to think that she of all persons was not 
then forgotten. 

My sketch under such circumstances proceeded but slowly, and 
my companions returned sooner than I was aware of, loaded with 
zoophytes of every description, which made quite a pretty group 
of stony-looking flowers : I have often seen them arranged with 
sea-weeds under the belief that they were of the same family. A 
few minutes more of rest, and a few last looks towards the Start 
Point lighthouse which lay in the extreme distance between us 
and the Bolt Head, and we turned our backs with some regret on 
a spot which we never expected to see again, and addressed our- 
selves to our journey home. I believe we were all more sorry to 
leave than the boy, who seemed lost in astonishment as to what 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 67 

motive we could have had in coming so far to do nothing but walk 
on the stones, whilst he had enjoyed the comfort of a sound sleep. 
This, with the addition of some cider which he obtained at one of 
the little shops in the place, so refreshed and invigorated him 
that he opened his heart, and imparted much of his private history 
to our not unwilling ears. I never have the heart to refuse a 
boy's confidence; it does him good to let him speak his mind, 
and who knows the use a friendly little word may be to one not 
resolutely bent on evil perhaps, though not quite determined on a 
better course ? 

It is all very well to go out for a day's pleasure, and to enjoy 
the whole thing very much, but then the return ! that is, and 
always has been, the difficulty. One's strength and spirits are 
very apt to give way just at the very point when they are most 
wanted, and I have heard of misunderstandings and all sorts of 
unpleasantness arising at the end of picnics and such-like excur- 
sions merely because people were too tired to be polite. I am 
pleased to say, however, that such was not our fate. We reached 
the boat just at the right time, when the river was full of water, 
and the tide beginning to run down. This sped our oars to a 
considerable extent, although we did occasionally get on the mud, 
from want of experience as to the position of the " lake." We 
sat then in the same order in which we had started, and found 
the old saying true that a change of work is as good as a bait, at 
least so it proved to us, though I am not prepared to say that 
horses, for whose especial use the proverb was apparently designed, 
would be so willing to endorse the sentiment; at any rate, the 
relief afforded by exercising another set of muscles is undeniably 
great. We passed Halwell Wood, looking bright and cheerful in 
the evening sun, and carpeted with blue bells and wood anemones, 
and looking out for our friend Mr. Strong as we passed his 
windows, we finally reached the Orestone, which is the entrance 
to Salcombe from the water, and close to the Preventive station. 



68 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

The view had increased in beauty as we reached Salcombe, 
and the bold headlands at the mouth of the harbour, though at 
some distance, gained much in height from being seen from the 
level of the water. I once heard one of the captains who had 
been in all the sea-ports of England, and many of those in foreign 
parts, declare that he never saw anything to equal the mouth of 
Salcombe Harbour for sublimity and beauty, and it always struck 
him in the same light whenever he returned from his voyages. 

Our landing being safely effected, and the boy dismissed to his 
supper, we began a rather toilsome ascent (for tired persons) to 
the house which had now become our home, for we had moved, 
not without regret, from the front of the shipwrights' yard to a 
pretty villa on the higher part of the hill behind the town, and 
to tell the truth, thoughts of the good meal which we intended 
to make occupied our minds to the exclusion of everthing else. 
But ! vanity of human wishes ! when we reached our lodgings, 
instead of finding the comfortable table spread for our refreshment 
and the kettle boiling over with impatience for our return, we 
found the house shut up, the cat mewing piteously for her evening 
meal, not a creature to be seen high or low, and worst of all, 
the kitchen fire was out ! What a finale to a day's pleasure ! 
Fortunately for us, Salcombe has the reputation of being a very 
honest place, and the person in charge, convinced of this, had not 
troubled herself to fasten the windows; so my husband having 
managed to effect a burglarious entrance into the house, came and 
opened for us the glass folding doors of the sitting room, and 
admitted us into our own premises. 

There was no time for grumbling; master, mistress, and 
visitors, all set to work, animated by the same desire of getting 
something to eat. The master, always great in blowing up a fire, 
undertook the the teakettle department, which, to do him justice, 
was accomplished in a masterly style, and by means of foraging in 
all sorts of out-of-the-way cupboards and closets, an impromptu 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 69 

sort of picnic was produced, and as hunger is notoriously the best 
sauce, no comments on the style of the feast were attempted. 

His worst enemy must have been pacified could he have seen 
the mortified, deprecating look which our landlord (otherwise not 
generally deficient in self-esteem) assumed when he returned from 
his employment, and found how his women-kind had treated us. 
After many apologies, which we did not think it politic to accept 
too graciously, lest a repetition of the offence should be attempted, 
he retired, but scarce had he left the room one minute when he 
returned with his final determination — "Madam, I shall never 
have any respect for my niece again ! " 






CHAPTER X. 

THE SPRING. SEWER MILL SANDS. 

" The poet9 vaunt autumnal tints too much : 
There is a season, a brief twenty days, 
Intercalated between summer's rays 
And the green flush of spring, when tints are such 
As, for their depth and rich variety, 
Autumnal colouring do outvie, 
In shading delicate and grace of touch. 

The gilded oak, the willow's pale sea green, 
The sable pine with brilliant larches blending, 
And the fair birch its glossy plumage lending 
To mediate the light and dark between : 
The yellow beech, the manly sycamore, 
And clouds of cherry blossoms floating o'er, 
May well out-do sad autumn's broidered scene. 

And all is joy or hope in earth or sky, 

'Tis not like autumn's pensive power, that lies 

In beautiful decay, which we so prize 

Because it is a glory passing by ; 

But a sweet sense that flowers are under foot, 

And that long evenings now are taking root, 

And summer days foreshadowed pleasantly." 

This is the very piece of poetry which I wanted to express what 
we all so often felt on the return of the spring of 1855 ; and if it 
had been actually written on the road winch led into Salcombe 
from above Woodville, it would not have expressed in more lively 
colours the entire beauty of the scene. The beech and larch trees 
were in their brightest dress, relieved by clusters of the dark pines 
which grow in loving brotherhood amongst them, and it wanted 
the pencil of a Creswick to do them justice. We now frequently 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 71 

walked up this road, to regale our eyes on the almost forgotten 
colour green, for during the whole of the winter it had slipped 
as it were out of our prism, save when we saw it on the trans- 
parent sea. The sense of novelty made it as welcome to us as a 
hard frost is to children. Be that as it may, we children of a 
larger growth got very restless, and determined upon another 
walking excursion, which, like many more important things in 
this life, took longer to talk about than to execute. 

One morning, however, when my husband and myself had 
scarcely finished our breakfast, the figure of E. appeared at the 
glass doors of our sitting-room, looking the perfection of spring 
attire ; a new lilac-and-white muslin, with a slight scarf — a sort of 
apology for putting on nothing, with a delicate sun bonnet of 
blue silk, completed her attire as she stood before us, all anima- 
tion at the thought of what she was going to propose. * Who's 
for Sewer Mill Sands ? " said she, holding up a basket of good 
things which she had brought with her. Now I had promised 
myself a quiet morning to write letters, finish sketches, or if 
absolutely necessary, not otherwise (trust me) to mend a few very 
imperative holes. But who could stay at home such a morning 
as that was ? Not I, certainly ! 

All scruples being perhaps too easily overcome, I consented to 
accompany herself and her sister on the long-promised walk to 
Sewer Mill Cove, of which Mr. Strong had so often spoken in 
such high terms. 

Of course we did not know the way — people never do when 
they set out for any thing desperate, but having obtained a few 
contradictory directions, we started. Our road at first lay by the 
usual w T ay to the Moult, passing the old Castle, now looking 
bright and cheerful in the sun. Herring gulls and gannets, 
hovering about the water, showed us where the shoals of white 
mullet were to be met with, and gave us also the prospect of a 
dish of fish, which we had missed of late, whilst the black shags 



72 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

perched on the highest parts of the rocks, were awaiting their prey. 
The thorns were just putting forth their buds on the hedge at 
the back of the Moult grounds : here and there were large 
patches of beautiful green leaves, which cheated us with promise 
of lilies of the valley, but which proved on nearer inspection to be 
the Alliaria or Bamsoms, and smelt like dirty onions — more dis- 
appointing than could be imagined. Primroses here and there 
raised their delicate golden heads amongst the now lengthening 
grass, and the Yeronica showed its sapphire blossoms on the 
sunny side of the road, whilst all kinds of grasses were springing 
up to testify to the truth that " seed-time and harvest, summer 
and winter, should not cease." Have you ever closely noticed 
the exquisite symmetry and proportions of this much neglected 
beauty ? the delicacy of its colouring, yellowish or pearly green ; 
the strong cylindrical reed which supports the flower, jointed in 
many places for greater strength, and gradually decreasing in 
diameter as it approaches the top, where it becomes of a hair-like 
fineness. Are you aware that we build our houses and church 
towers on the same principle? decreasing the thickness of the 
wall for the purpose of giving them a lighter weight to sustain. 
And above all, have you never remarked its unfailing supply, 
springing up where anything short of a moss can grow, so that no 
place can be absolutely barren so long as it retains its power of 
clothing all man's fresh works with its "lucid robe." How it 
hastens to cover our railway embankments, which without it 
would be a perpetual eyesore ! and see how the little annual grass 
strives to conceal the raw-looking gravel which our gardeners are 
so fond of. The provision for supplying the immense quantity 
of seed which its fertile nature requires is something astonishing. 
Two or three generations of Poa Annua will grow and seed in 
one year. 

Passing behind the Moult, we came to the South Sands, and 
turning our backs on the sea, we proceeded up the valley towards 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 73 

the village of Malborough. The novelty of the road, with its 
high cliff on one side, and meadows bounded by hills on the 
other, beguiled its length, and after various experiences of its 
nature, bad, good, and indifferent, for about three miles, we 
reached a farm-house, which lay apparently directly in the way to 
the Sands, for we had to ask leave to go through the farm-yard to 
accomplish our object. This was willingly granted, and we flatter 
ourselves that the sight of a human being out of their own circle 
was sufficient compensation for any favour that could be asked, so 
very lonely did the place appear. There was nothing to indicate 
that we were approaching the sea, but at the end of a lane the 
prospect suddenly opened on a flat plain of sand enclosed on both 
sides by lofty cliffs, with the view seawards partly blocked up by 
an enormous mass of rock called Preston Clerks, or more probably 
Priest and Clerks, as the rocks on the coast of Dawlish were called 
the Parson and Clerk when both were there ; but the Clerk was 
washed away in a storm some years since, and now the Parson 
stands alone. 

This spot of sand presented an image of the most perfect peace 
and quiet imaginable. A large and very shallow pool, left by 
the receding tide, reflected the blue tints of the sky on its 
mirror-like expanse. A flock of gulls, whose tameness was any- 
thing but "shocking" to us, was wading in the shallowest parts, 
enjoying their bath, and at the same time searching for sandworms 
and aquatic insects, which on this iron-bound coast are rare 
delicacies. It looked like an invasion of their territory to disturb 
them, and I felt happy that no one carrying a gun was of our 
party; the temptation would have been irresistible, I dare say, 
but nothing annoys me so much as the wanton destruction of 
creatures which seem made to contribute to our happiness whilst 
increasing their own. A small stream falling over rocks and 
stones, together with the length of the walk I had already taken, 
tempted me to sketch and rest at the same time, and my compa- 

L 



74 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

nions left me for the purpose of exploring the rocks. They 
returned after a time with astonishing accounts of the fissures 
they had discovered, and the quaint form of the rocks on the 
right hand side; so after some refreshment, of which we stood 
greatly in need, we commenced the ascent of the cliffs which lay 
on our left, and from which we beheld a prospect which will not 
soon be forgotten. 

The little cove lay at our feet, serene and quiet as we had left 
it, our footprints still visible on the sand, whilst beyond it our 
eyes ranged over a vast extent of sea and rocks curiously inter- 
mingled ; Bigbury Bay, containing many strangely shaped rocks 
and coves, some of them rarely accessible by water; after that, 
Bolt Tail, which is frequently confounded with Bolt Head which 
we had left behind us on the left ; whilst beyond Bolt Tail, and 
rising out of the sea at a distance from the cliffs, we could see Rarae 
Head and the Mewstone which stands at the mouth of Plymouth 
harbour ; and finally the view was closed by the grey cliffs of the 
Cornish coast, resting on the bosom of the water like banks of 
mist. The local rhyme 

" Higher Eew, Lower Hew, 
Eew Eew Hill : 
Higher Sewer, Lower Sewer, 
Sewer Sewer Mill" 

was probably inspired by the view from this spot. The Eddystone 
lighthouse is visible in the same direction at certain times of the 
day, and in certain states of atmosphere, but we did not see it. 
Looking back, we saw all the coast indented in like manner, but 
the rocks did not generally appear so bold, perhaps from the 
contrast with the Bolt Head, which has such a proud pre-eminence. 
Vegetation on these lofty hills was scanty enough, but patches of 
thrift and brownish furze promised a sufficient variety of colour in 
due time. The scurvy grass would grow, though terribly stunted, 
and a person who had only seen it in such situations would fail to 
recognise the plant in its more succulent form in the moister 
situations below. 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 75 

We saw the station house, inhabited by a party of Coast-guard 
men alternately with the Salcombe party, and dreary enough it 
looked, like a little white sentry box, which seemed so frail as to 
be in danger of being blown over by some of the terrific blasts 
for which the situation is famous. The sea-gulls were beginning 
to mate, and flocks of them were selecting their future homes in 
the inaccessible rocks, which people find means of plundering 
nevertheless. The path was marked out for us by the stones which 
the Preventive-men whiten as they project from the sod, to serve as 
an indication of their way in the dark and dreary nights when 
they have to walk on the rocks merely for the purpose of being 
known to be there. Government no doubt thinks that prevention 
is better than cure, but smugglers would find it no joke to run a 
cargo of contraband goods in such terrible seas as we have wit- 
nessed on this part of the coast, where every place is more or less 
dangerous. Notwithstanding this I am informed that Hope — a 
place not far distant — has had a great pre-eminence in the smug- 
gling line. 

Descending from our lofty post of observation, we met by 
appointment one of our party, and then set out to return home 
together. How monotonous did the fields and roads appear to us 
who had so lately been feasted with such variety of beauty ! But 
every thing must have its turn, and it is certain that we must 
soon starve if all the country were like what we had just left. So 
Speed the plough ! and Long live the farmers ! May their wheat 
fields never be mildewed, nor their cattle suffer diminution ! In 
spite, however, of agriculture, that bane of all botanists, I found 
some plants of Adiantum Lanceolatum, and also made acquaintance 
with a beautiful Conferva growing in a rapid stream, like coarse 
green hair. 

We met with an unexpected treat in finding our tea prepared 
for us at the cottage on the South Sands, by the kind forethought 
of my husband, who had left the materials on his way to meet 



76 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

us. Surely never were homely luxuries more appreciated. Mrs. 
Snowden is the beau ideal of a cottager's wife — clean apron, good 
bread and butter included, and we continued the acquaintance to 
the great satisfaction of ourselves as well as of other friends to 
whom we afterwards introduced her. 



c n. 



I 



L\i 



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CHAPTER XI. 

LORD COURTENAY's WALK. 

Another approach to the same range of cliffs must be described, 
for it is one of the most beautiful in the neighbourhood, and 
would form the chief feature in the new town which Salcombe is 
to make one of these days, when the railway, for which a prelimi- 
nary meeting has been already held, is Cj made to Kingsbridge, and 
from thence to join the South Devon. Then, indeed, Torquay 
must look to its honours. 

The approach lies by the road I have already mentioned ; and 
passing the South Sands, we commence the ascent of the hill on 
the right side of the harbour, and after crossing a rather dreary 
piece of dry down, reach a gate which forms the entrance to a 
beautiful walk, cut about half way down the magnificent cliffs, 
and bordered by ferns, brambles, foxgloves, and heath ; in fact, 
all the plants which will grow with but little soil to support them. 
Here and there an orchis peeps out, and later the ground is blue 
with the flowers of the dwarf Scabious, which grows in profusion. 
The little Burnet rose too shows its delicately cut leaves and 
purple thorns, jealously guarding its cream-coloured blossoms, 
scented like attar of roses, from the too venturesome hand. 
Large tufts of Iris Foetidissima, the wild purple Iris, and But- 
cher's Broom supply a darker green to the picture, and enliven 
by then* scarlet berries the winter scene. 

Suddenly the path becomes obstructed by rocks, which allow 
only a narrow egress, and soon after, on turning a sharp corner, 



78 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

we find ourselves in a most exposed situation, the path strewed 
with slippery fragments which have fallen down from the Sharp 
Tors, which tower above our heads like ruined castles. The cove 
thus formed by this point is called Starehole Bay, and contains a 
large cavern, extending to a fabulous length, and is also believed 
to be the site of an ancient Danish settlement. From some of 
the fissures the Stag's Horn lichen depends, so nearly approach- 
ing the colour of the r^cks as to make it difficult to find. The 
larger rocks out of the reach of the spray are covered with 
lichens of a deep golden colour, or a brickish red; whilst the 
little Sedum Anglicum, inserting itself into all unoccupied cre- 
vices, reddened by exposure to wind and cold to a fine ruby tint, 
added to that of the sheep's sorrel and wild geranium, complete 
the colouring of the tesselated pavement of the footpath. Amongst 
the furze bushes large quantities of the Bloody Cranesbill might 
be found. 

But what are those sinning black objects which rest so motion- 
less on the yellow rocks, the sun making them glow with a 
greenish lustre ? As we approach they scarcely seem to acknow- 
ledge our presence by raising their heads, although some of us 
endeavour to make them more aware of it by flinging stones at 
them, but only learn from the experiment how very far they are 
beyond our reach. At last one of the cormorants, for such they 
are, makes a dart and seizes some unfortunate fish, at which the 
rest take courage, and edge a little nearer in hopes of meeting 
with similar good luck. They frequently fly inland nearly to 
the end of the creek at Kingsbridge; and the Salcombe ferry- 
man told us that being attracted by seeing a sort of scuffle going 
on in the water, and putting out his boat to get a nearer view, 
he saw that a " shag," as he calls them, had, in his endeavour 
to capture a large haddock, been drawn under the water, and 
had in his turn pulled up the fish to the surface, whilst he with 
his boat-hook secured them both. 






MYETLES AND ALOES. 79 



Lower down we once saw some pied oyster catchers, standing 
on the rocks barely covered with the sea, searching for shell-fish, 
their red legs looking very picturesque in contrast with their 
black-and-white plumage; so much so, that I fancy our sea- side 
belles must have taken the hint, and adopted shepherd's plaid and 
red stockings out of sheer emulation. When I add the Cornish 
choughs, now becoming scarce, with their curved beaks and red 
legs, together with the numberless goldfinches, stonechats, and 
whinchats which are always enjoying themselves on these pleasant 
pasturages, I think that Lord Courtenay ought to resign his title 
to this walk in favour of " The Naturalists.-" All kinds of gannets, 
herring-gulls, and other aquatic birds, disport themselves in the 
clear green sea below, affording in their innocent enjoyment of 
life an unfailing source of delight to those who have learnt 

" Never to blend their folly or their pride 
With sorrow of the meanest thing which feels." 

At the Sharp Tors the " Walk/' properly so called, ends ; but 
a footpath worn in the scanty herbage is perceptible, and leads to 
the Bolt Head, which, seen from that side, is of a magnificent 
height, and of a fine bold fracture and blackish colour. We see 
from this point the whole extent of the bay, shut in by the opposite 
headland called Prawle Point, containing some fine scenery, the 
chief beauty of which is Mazely Cove, to be described in another 
chapter. Turner's picture of the Bay of Baise presents a striking 
similarity to this scene, making allowance of course for the Italian 
foreground with dancing nymphs, &c. 

We had arranged with one of the Preventive-men to meet us 
at this place, and in company with him we walked to the white 
station house, known as the Signal House. Many were the 
beautiful spots which he showed us on our way. Sometimes Bolt 
Head appeared as if shut in by the surrounding hills ; at other 
times it stood in solitary grandeur, the " monarch of the scene," 
reminding us of Goldsmith's description. At another point the 



80 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

sea would appear set like a sapphire between dark brown cliffs, 
relieved by streaming ivy, and ! 

" How fearful and how dizzy 'twas 
To cast our eyes so low." 

One sweet little cove we always remember with pleasure: it 
was formed by a long fissure in the rocks, running a considerable 
way into the land. Large rocks plentifully scattered about on the 
top afforded shelter for numberless little ferns and other delicate 
plants. The smaller rocks with which the cliffs were covered at 
their base presented constant obstruction to the waves, so as to 
keep them in perpetual foam, and thus fringing Ocean's blue 
mantle with exquisite lace. Gentle sheep were nibbling near us, 
and overhead the larks were treating us to a concert in which all 
the performers were amateurs and did their best. 

" Shame on the heart that dreams of blessings gone, 
Or wakes the spectral forms of woe or crime ! 
Whilst Nature sings of hope and joy alone, 
Reading her tuneful lesson in her own sweet time." 

Of course sketch book and colours were called into requisition; 
but " Who can paint like nature ? " This charming spot was 
called Off Cove. 

Our guide conducted us along the edge of the cliff to the Signal 
House, leaving us to pursue our ramble in the direction which he 
pointed out, and return to a tea which he had promised to provide. 
Before leaving he took us to quite a kind of turret on the cliffs, 
(at least it appeared so when we looked down from it) and showed 
us the gulls all screaming and busy, selecting their future homes. 
Their cries, wild and discordant as they then sounded, would I 
dare say be fine when heard in a storm or such-like circumstances. 
Prom thence we. wandered to the top of the cliffs above Sewer 
Mill Sands, and then returned to the station, cold — I cannot say 
how cold it became as we met the full force of the wind, and felt 
the lessening power of the sun. Our entertainer, " on hospitable 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 81 

cares intent/' aware of this, had lighted the most enormous fire 
to give us a warm reception in a room not more than eight feet 
square. A few cups and saucers he had borrowed, and water- 
cresses of prodigious size had been culled for us by his own hands. 
A pewter salt dish and one large iron spoon were laid ready to eat 
the eggs which he prepared to boil for us. We made the tea, and 
then watched his proceedings. After procuring a very large 
saucepan and putting the eggs into it, he sat down to blow the 
fire which at Her Majesty's expense was already made large enough 
to roast a dinner for twenty men. He never left off one moment 
till the watch told us that the eggs were cooked, and even then 
we had to request him to desist, as we found ourselves so intensely 
hot that we could bear it no longer, which I fear he thought 
rather ungrateful. He had taken immense! pains with his toilette. 
" Time had not thinned his flowing hair," but only grizzled it, 
and it was coquettishly arranged in ringlets all round his head, 
leaving, however, little apertures for the earrings to peep through. 
Can any one say why sailors are so fond of ringlets and earrings ? 
Some of the older ones a few years ago pertinaciously stuck to the 
pigtail, but that generation is wearing out. At all events Richards 
was "himself" that afternoon, and I longed to paint him on the 
spot. If I had but a photograph of him ! He was a self-taught 
naturalist, great in birds, and had the reputation of being an 
unerring shot, and sadly he lamented that his age had deprived 
him of the pleasure of laying a gun at the ' { Rooshians," but 
assured us that it would not prevent his taking as good an aim as 
many a younger man ; for, having been a man-of-war's man in his 
youth, he rather fretted at the compulsory inaction of his present 
life. If his aim were as good as has been represented, it is for- 
tunate for the Russians that he was thus incapacitated, for their 
sufferings as human beings were too often overlooked in our 
complacency at our own victories. I used frequently to call to 
mind a remark I remember hearing a great and good man make 

M 



82 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

when I was a child. The conversation turned on the loss a 
gentleman had sustained in having his stables consumed, and 
carriage and riding-horses burnt to death, by a fire made in 
attempting to destroy a wasp's nest. Every one was pitying the 
horses and some pointers, which had also shared the same fate, 
when our friend quietly remarked " Yes, indeed ! very sad for the 
horses and dogs, but I observe that nobody has thought of the 
poor wasps ! " 



CHAPTEE XII. 

SPLAT COVE. 

This little recess at the entrance of Lord Courtenay's walk was a 
place to which we frequently directed our steps at low water, in 
search of the sea-weeds which grew abundantly on the pools 
in the rocks above it. Indeed, we were fain to make it our 
garden, for want of another, and learned to take as much pleasure 
in the growth of our marine favourites as in any terrestial garden we 
had ever possessed. The bottom of the Cove was rather difficult 
of access, as some of the rock had been unfairly cut away in the 
endeavour to make an entrance to an iron mine, which, however, 
proved an unprofitable speculation, and was soon abandoned. The 
entrance of the shaft forming a cavern looking towards the sea 
presents a sight of great interest to the botanist,. for it is fringed 
with very long fronds of the Asplenium Marinum, which grow in 
profusion, constantly enjoying a bath from the sea foam, which 
seems essential to their prosperity. In a cultivated state heat 
seems to apply the same stimulant as salt to this fern, but the 
fronds assume a rather more compact form than when found 
wild. At all events moisture and shade are essential to their 
prosperity, for the specimens which grow on the cliffs above are 
so stunted as with difficulty to be recognised as belonging to the 
same species. Many of the sea-loving plants grow in situations 
barely escaping the salt water, such as the Arenarias, Sedum, and 
Samphire, and I found also the little Catenella Opuntia growing 
in small black tufts on the higher parts of the rocks, hardly ever 
getting a drop of sea-water^ saving from the foam, or from very 



84 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

high tides. It is difficult to suppose it to be a real sea-weed, but I 
call it so on the authority of Dr. Harvey. There was also another 
plant much resembling it, and in similar situations, called in 
" Landsborough's Introduction " Lychnea Pygmea, and it is a 
disputed point whether this latter be really a sea-weed or only 
a lichen. Although so much alike to the general observer they 
will be found very different when viewed through a magnifying 
glass. It is then seen, with other differences, that the colour of 
the former is a dull purple, whilst that of the latter is a dark 
green. 

The floor of these caverns was strewed with shells, all wearing 
that thickened look which collectors call "dead," that is, the 
animals had died out of them long before they were washed 
ashore; and we had here an opportunity of seeing one of the 
beaches in course of formation, which are pointed out by geolo- 
gists as indications of the former presence of the sea in counties 
now far inland. They appeared to be accumulating up to high 
water mark, when depositions from the top would by degrees fall 
in and consolidate the mass. When the tides were low we could 
see the living animals in great profusion clinging to the sides of 
the rock. The Lapillus Purpurea, limpets, and others might be 
found in abundance. The bivalve shells usually burrow in the 
sand or mud more within the harbour, where also at the right 
season the Pecten and the Pinna might be found. I remember 
soon after our arrival at Salcombe we were promised as a great 
treat some scallops, which we had never before tasted : day after 
day we enquired for them, but were told that until the snow fell 
they would not rise. This statement, though strange, proved 
true, and no sooner did a few flakes fall than we beheld the water 
covered with little boats eager to be the first to bring the coveted 
dainties into the town. I do not know what induced them to 
rise afterwards without the snow, but it is certain that they were 
to be had far into the spriug. 



MYHTLES AND ALOES. 85 

Landsborough says that the scallops dance most merrily ; and 
there does seem a strange power of locomotion in some of the 
bivalve species, for I have read elsewhere (in " Glaucus," I 
believe) of the clatter made by some of the thorny cockles which 
were left in a plate by themselves. I much regretted the absence 
at the time of a competent instructor in such matters, and was 
obliged to reserve my admiration for the handsome shell, which 
figures so frequently in the arms of those who claim to be descended 
from the Knights of St. John. The Salcombe people, who cared 
very little for associations connected with " cockled hat and staff/' 
nevertheless received it implicitly that, according to the nursery 
song, " cockle shells" were a correct ornament for a garden, and 
so all their small plots of flowers were bordered with them. Indeed 
we can hardly think of a Salcombe garden without the invariable 
myrtle, which would excite the envy of gardeners elsewhere, 
growing in the middle of a small mound, sustained at its proper 
height by means of these useful shells, which form substitutes for 
spade, trowel, firepan, and dust shovel, in many cottages; and 
also keep hot the dinner of the little cockle or squin boy who has 
been beguiled by his success into forgetting his mid-day meal. 

But to return to Splat Cove. Hanging from the rocks below 
we could find at low tides many beautiful sea-weeds, such as the 
Ptilota Sericea with its invariable parasite, also many varieties 
of the Polysiphonia with its thread-like stems; and once, and 
only once, did I find a decayed specimen of the Bryopsis Plumosa, 
but it was the wrong season of the year for it. 

The rocks were incrusted with slimy reddish brown and green 
sponges, and numberless other things of which I know not the 
names, and never till then had an opportunity of seeing. Occa- 
sionally a small cuttle-fish might be found, but the pools above 
were the most interesting, as at all times we could see their 
contents. Here I once found the Griffithsia Setacea with its 
crimson silky threads, and not then knowing its peculiarity, was 



86 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

surprised to see its colour fading away when placed in fresh water. 
Its fruit grew on little pedicles as described by Harvey and others, 
and I much regret I did not preserve the specimen. Harvey says 
that the fine colour is instantly given out with a crackling noise, 
occasioned by the membrane bursting, on coming in contact with 
fresh water, and it is a curious circumstance that fresh water as 
effectually destroys the life of marine plants as salt applied in too 
great quantities does that of land vegetation. Both facts seem to 
indicate a higher degree of sensibility than is easily explained, and 
there are other circumstances in the physiology of sea-weeds which 
are very difficult to interpret by any known rules. The seed 
spores of some of the green alga? have been thought to be en- 
dowed with a low degree of animal life, and the sensitive plant is 
somewhat analogous to it. Thus we see that Nature, though full 
of harmonies, is equally full of paradoxes, and our limited powers 
of observation forbid the hope of ever being able to reach the 
whole, which may possibly be reserved as part of the employment 
of a blest eternity. All these beauties cannot have been created 
in vain, and if the means of observing them are denied to our 
imperfect senses in this life, is there anything unreasonable in the 
thought that a more exalted state of being will be better fitted for 
the reception of greater knowledge ? 

The pools also contained many corallines and some of the rarer 
green algse : the Codium Tomentosum was there, looking like 
pieces of ginger root overgrown with moss, and as soft as velvet 
to the touch. The fronds of the Ulva Linza, like tempting 
young green lettuce, were beginning to grow again after their 
winter rest, though at no time were the pools ever without them. 
These, relieved by some of the smaller crimson sorts, form beauti- 
ful studies of colour, which we were never tired of contemplating, 
but which it would be hopeless to reproduce on paper, for they 
must be quite unintelligible to the majority of observers. 

Returning from the end of the walk above, we feasted our eyes 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 87 

with ever fresh delight on the prospect landwards. The water 
far below us glided on till it appeared dilated into a lake-like 
expanse beyond the harbour, the entrance to which was marked 
by buoys, looking like gigantic pins stuck into pincushions of 
rock, and shining red in the sun. The Moult, peeping from its 
entourage of trees, was only visible at certain places on account of 
the extreme bend of the shore. Then the eye rested on Sandhill 
Cottage above, and on the Castle below. Woodville further on 
looked out from its nest, and then a few houses and a little knot 
of shipping marked the situation of the town, surrounded as it 
was by hills on all sides ; the whole forming a scene which for 
variety and beauty is rarely to be met with. Occasionally we 
have seen heavy clouds charged with ha^ blow over all on a 
sudden, and everything would appear wintry and desolate; the 
water a dark leaden colour, and the foam scarcely white. In a 
few minutes a hope of better things might be discerned in the 
distance; narrow streaks of light, making the water look of a 
pale green, would be seen playing on the surface ; the hills would 
discover patches of colour on their brown summits, the furze glow 
with its golden glory, and 

" All this leafless and uncoloured scene 
Flush into variety again" 

These dissolving views would be repeated many times on a " pee- 
vish April day," always with the effect of leaving our judgment 
as to which was the most beautiful trembling in the balance. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE MOULT. 

I have said but little of this pretty seat because I feel that the 
season of the year in which we first saw it was not the most cal* 
culated to show it to advantage ; but a description of Sal combe 
would be incomplete without it. 

After many alterations and improvements, it has of late become 
the property of Lord Courtenay (the present Earl of Devon), and 
it would be simply impertinent in a stranger like myself to make 
any remarks upon the house ; but the gardens contain treasures 
long accumulated which florists and botanists would go far to see. 
The conservatory wall contains the finest oranges and limes, I 
should think, in England — at the same time, those of Woodville 
and Cliff House are splendid, and have not so much protection ; 
but the glory of this place lies in its flowering shrubs and rare 
trees, the exceeding mildness of the climate favouring the growth 
of the more tender coniferae, which have of late years been so 
much cultivated; and we saw a Norfolk Island pine, which had 
lived four years, but had at last fallen a victim to the severity of 
the winter of 1854. This tree will not endure a lower tempera- 
ture than thirty degrees ; and it is a proof of the average mildness 
of Salcombe winters that it should have stood so long. The 
Australian gum tree, with its blueish foliage and white stems, 
flourishes here ; and the remarks of travellers on the disagreeable 
tint of the Australian landscape seem fully borne out by the 
specimen we saw. All such evergreens as rhododendrons, kal- 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 89 

mias, and the larger heaths are rampant, as are fuschias and 
passion flowers, to say nothing of myrtles, large and small leaved, 
which ripen a prodigious quantity of berries. I have a drawing 
of two sorts of passion flowers, white and a dark crimson, with 
large golden fruit as big as a Mogul plum, which bears date 
December 21st! Climate again! There are large quantities of 
"New Zealand flax (Phormium Tenax) looking like handsome iris 
leaves, and Arums, or Nile lilies, growing in pools made for them. 
Hydrangeas of enormous size, and verbena, with stems the thick-" 
ness of a man's arm, grew here, as well as in the garden of the 
bee-hive roofed cottage in which we lodged. A water lily new to 
me, called the Snake's Head, grew in a^asin round a fountain ; 
and it certainly presented a curious resemblance to the head of a 
viper, the petals being armed with rows of teeth. Altogether it 
was one of Flora's pet establishments, and Tennyson might have 
been inspired to write "The Gardener's Daughter" within its 
shades. One peep of the Castle from a rising bit of ground 
would have made a fine picture for any Pre-Raphaelite who would 
have had the patience to paint the foreground of flowers, which 
added so much to the beauty of the subject. I have always re- 
gretted that we did not study the contents of this garden more 
than we did : the want of a good guide, and our natural preference 
for wilder scenery, is the only reason I can give. 

The Moult stands on a rocky ridge between the North and 
South Sands, in which places alone is there any approach to a 
beach ; but here the billows break in their full majesty, occasion- 
ally even surmounting the barrier at the bottom of the garden, 
though this is of rare occurrence. It is possible, but very diffi- 
cult, at extremely low tides, to walk from one sand to the other 
in front of the Moult : our young friends accomplished this feat 
once, but at the expense of great anxiety to myself, who waited 
on the South Sands full of fears for their safety in their un- 
known path. 

N 



90 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

A few years since the gardener at the Moult, when rising early 
to attend to his hothouse fires,, was astonished at the apparition 
of a man walking about amongst his shrubs, apparently in great 
distress. A sad tale had the poor fellow to tell. His vessel had 
been wrecked in the night, and himself thrown on the rocks in 
the dark by some extraordinarily high wave. He had no idea 
where he was, and could hear nothing of his poor shipmates ; but 
the morning dawn showed him the wreck of his vessel and the 
loss of every man on board. After being kindly cared for by the 
gardener's wife, he found his way to the town with his piteous 
tale, where he received the relief usually given to shipwrecked 
mariners. It would be interesting to know the after history of 
this man — whether his wonderful escape had any serious effect on 
him, or whether he regarded it merely as an incident not unex- 
ampled in his way of life. It was probably less wonderful to him 
than to us stay-at-home people; but still the sudden loss of so 
many of his companions must have affected him deeply. 

The North Sands are remarkable for containing the remains of 
a submerged forest, which seems to have been overthrown by 
some unrecorded disruption of the land which forms the hills on 
either side; or, perhaps, a body of water descending from the 
country above Hanger Mill, and sweeping everything in its way 
towards the sea, would have the same effect. Geologists tell us 
that very wonderful things have been accomplished by the agency 
of waterspouts — the whole surface of a tract of country changed 
by them ; but one can hardly think this to have been the cause, 
though it might have been. A stream flows from Hanger Mill 
to the sea, which may be the remains of a greater body of water, 
for the fields on each side are evidently flattened by its agency. 
The roots of fir trees and oaks could be recognised at low tides, 
and at such times the sea would be full of small fragments of 
decayed wood, and wash up like the rinsings of a teapot : large 
quantities of sea-weed also might be found, and carts from the 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 91 

neighbourhood would come down for the purpose of conveying it 
away for manure. We always tried to be present at such times, 
not only for the purpose of enjoying the picturesque sight, but 
also to endeavour to find the shells of the Pholas, which bore 
their way through the half-rotten wood, though they are equally 
capable of working through stone ; but I suspect it must always 
be limestone, or some sorts which can be affected by the secre- 
tion of an acid which they are said to possess. The long stems, 
leaves, and roots of the Laminaria — " Tangle," as they call them 
— which had become loosened from their hold by the winter's 
storm assisting probably their natural decay, were the most prized 
by the gatherers ; and the patient " mutteys " carried away loads 
of them in their wooden panniers to the potato grounds of their 
thrifty masters. Sea-weed forms an important item in the eco- 
nomy of the small farms of the neighbourhood, as very little stock 
seems to be kept, and the fields become much denuded of earth 
from their high slopes. I was told that many farmers carry every 
year soil from the bottom to the top of the fields, which seems 
necessary, for we often found ourselves much above the ankles in 
the loose soil accumulated at the foot of the hills on the Portle- 
mouth side of the estuary. The farmers have in use a peculiar 
kind of sledge called a butt, on which turnips and such-like 
produce are placed, and drawn up to the tops of the hills, and 
transferred to carts ready to receive them. Hay and corn are 
chiefly saved on horseback, piled up on wooden saddles, so heavy 
as to be a sufficient load of themselves ; for it would be impossible 
for wheeled carts to ascend such steep hills. In Bailey's Diction- 
ary the arms of the Saddlers' Company are depicted thus — a 
chevron between three saddles, which are represented exactly like 
those still used for the purposes I have described. The furrows 
are placed in a kind of circle, to avoid the necessity of going 
directly up or down hill. But the great article of rural manu- 
facture is the cider, for which some of the hamlets are famous. 



92 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

Our friend Mr. W. will tell you that there is no cider like that 
from Horsecombe ; and I believe he is right, for I never tasted 
any to equal it. Others will prefer it from another orchard, and 
talk as learnedly about strength and flavour as connoisseurs when 
discussing the merits of " 42 port " or some wonderful " dry 
sherry." 

It was certainly very pleasant, whilst taking a long walk, to be 
able to purchase a tumbler of this delightful beverage for a penny, 
though I question whether the practice was a very wholesome 
one. Still less to drink water on which the sun was shining, 
as some said, though I never could see the reason of the prohi- 
bition, for I should have thought on the contrary that the sun 
would exercise a beneficial effect rather than otherwise; but it 
is difficult to account for, still more to combat, vulgar errors, 
which, when not actually injurious, may well be left for expe- 
rience and better education to counteract. 

I have hitherto said nothing about the aloes which grow at 
Salcombe in a marvellous manner. Everybody who has the room 
to spare thinks it necessary to have one or two of these strange 
productions. There was a splendid one, and certainly the finest, 
in the lower garden of Cliff House, which, with two of Mr. 
Strong's, and one at the Moult, flowered in the summer of 1855, 
and I have not heard of any flowering since. It was thought 
that the unusual cold of the preceding winter had given them a 
check, and thus forced them into blossom, as is the case with 
other plants. 

Mr. Strong's aloes grew in his garden on the cliff which over- 
hangs the estuary, and must have formed a beautiful object from 
the water. The flowers, which grow in large tufts, are of a green- 
ish yellow colour, and the whole plant about twenty-seven feet in 
height when the huge flower stalk has reached its full develop- 
ment, having grown at the rate of four inches per diem. The 
rocky nature of the soil combined with the warm moist air seems 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 93 

to be exactly suited to their growth. The first aloe of which I 
could find an account flowered in the upper garden of Cliff House, 
and was twenty-eight feet in height: this was in 1774, since 
which time aloes have never been absent from Salcombe. They 
must have been brought by some of the captains on their return 
from their voyages to Spain or the south of France. In fact, Mr. 
Strong's garden more resembled the shores of the Mediterranean 
than England : pomegranates, olives, and myrtles, being abundant 
in that favoured spot. 

The notion of the aloe flowering once in a hundred years is a 
popular fallacy : from seventeen to twenty years is more correct ; 
and even then it would require great patience or a laudable anxiety 
for the benefit of posterity to plant an aloe, which it is not likely 
that the owner would ever live to see in its beauty. I think they 
might be induced to flower earlier if any means could be discovered 
of checking their growth by removing them, but they are so un- 
wieldy, and spread out so far that it is impossible to approach 
near enough to dig up the roots. Mr. Strong's critical eye 
detected a difference in the growth of some of the leaves of those 
in his garden which proved to be the forerunner of the flowers. 

The olives, divested of their associations, are not interesting 
shrubs : their leaves, very much like those of the Phyllirea, are of 
a greyish hue, and we saw here an old-fashioned plant which used 
to flourish in the conservatories of our ancestors, and which, now 
that it is become a fancy to grow plants entirely for the beauty of 
their foliage, will probably come into fashion again ; I mean the 
Melanthus. It has very handsome, large, curled and fringed 
leaves of a glaucous green, with a flower nearly black I am told, 
but have never seen it. 

But the glory of Mr. Strong's garden in the spring time were 
his jonquils. How sweet they were ! surely as Prescott says of 
the untrodden scenes of Mexican fertility, " the very senses ached 
with the perfume." I never saw anything like them for beauty 



94 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

or fragrance. Taney a bed of double jonquils, yellow as canary 
birds, and as large as a good sized asparagus bed ! on either side 
of which was a bed of hyacinths of similar dimensions ! Armed 
with instructions as to the right management of the lock, which 
was paradoxical as its owner, we used to invade his territory 
whenever we were at a loss for a bouquet, and never came away 
without something to reward our walk to his garden. The accu- 
mulated scent of so much fragrance was often too much, and I 
used to turn my attention to the Torch lilies, which grew under 
the shelter of the aloes, and a curious sort of Fritillaria, with 
bunches of dark chocolate flowers instead of single ones like those 
in our gardens. I remember with pleasure the pride he used to 
take in this spot, and well he might, for no one touched it but 
himself, and, as a friend prettily remarked, "flowers are our 
dumb children," and he, poor man ! had outlived all his own, and 
had only a little nephew of the third generation to keep up his 
name amongst men. 

Note. — Mr. Buckland, in his last delightful work (" Curiosities of Natural 
History," second series), has devoted some pages to the consideration of the 
means by which the Pholas bores ; and the result of his investigations is that 
the animal makes its hole by mechanical rather than by chemical means, the 
roughened surface of the shell acting as a file upon the rock, wood, or even 
wax, in which it has been found. The idea of a solvent capable of acting on 
all these substances is quite inadmissible. It may be added that Portland 
stone is entirely free from its ravages, owing to the large quantity of silica 
which it contains. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

" Sail forth into the sea, O ship ! 
Through wind and wave right onwards steer! " 

Longfellow. 

It was about the time that jonquils were blooming that talk began 
to be rife respecting the launch of the vessel which was building 
under our eyes in the yard opposite o&r^ house. Of course we 
determined to see the whole, and for that purpose could not be 
better situated. 

The building had gone on steadily from day to day, and so 
imperceptibly that I was surprised one morning to see some spars 
rigged up in a kind of gallows fashion to furnish a fulcrum for 
the tackle, which, apparently without effort, lifted the tall masts 
into position through the places which were left for them in the 
deck. 

The figure-head, a fierce-looking character representing, as I 
supposed, a Saracen, with a turban on his head, and a firelock in 
hand, had been standing for some weeks in the hall of the "worthy 
master," certainly not modelled "from the master's daughter," 
better adapted, I should say, to scare off thieves or to frighten 
little boys. However, one morning being attracted to the win- 
dow by great sounds of hauling up, and looking out, we saw 
our friend the Turk in the act of being hoisted up to his final 
resting place, amidst loud expressions of admiration from the 
bystanders. When there he was pronounced to be a Zouave, in 
compliment to that body of Trench soldiers who were at the 
time so popular in the Crimea. There the Zouave remained for 



\)b MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

a few weeks pointing his musket at us, but familiarity breeds 
contempt, and we soon ceased to regard his menaces. 

At length the rigging was completed, and all things were begin- 
ning to look as if a change were at hand. Men were seen removing 
the supports on each side of the hull ; all useless planks and coils 
of rope were taken away from that part of the yard in which the 
vessel lay, tools and instruments were moved out of sight, and 
finally the deck of the vessel was swept clean from the shavings 
and litter of the workmen. The almanac foretold when the 
highest tide would take place, and all arrangements having been 
completed with strict reference to the fact that time and tide wait 
for no man, the morning of the auspicious day dawned on multi- 
tudes of the "Salcombes," including of course all the boys of 
the town, waiting at the yard by half-past six to assist in, or at 
least, to witness the launch. 

Our two friends had promised to come and see the sight from 
our windows, and breakfast with us after the ceremony was over ; 
and one of them fulfilled her promise. 

Now began a scene of excitement. The broad-shouldered 
Captain Cove and all the boys swarmed up the one remaining 
ladder into the vessel. 

" Then the master, 
"With a gesture of command, 
Waved his hand ; 
And at the word, 
Loud and sudden there was heard, 
All around them and below, 
The sound of hammers, blow on blow, 
Knocking away the staves and spars." 

Every one seemed to come out in a new character. The 
cordial linen draper chopped away like an obdurate woodman who 
could not be induced by any persuasion to " spare that tree." 
The pale-faced literary tailor worked himself into a healthy colour, 
and I am certain must have acquired an appetite for breakfast 



MYRTLES A1SD ALOES. 97 

which must have astonished his family. The butcher plied his 
axe with a will, and the bakers, with turned-up sleeves, worked 
away at something stiffer than dough. The shipwright ran hither 
and thither, reproving, commanding, exhorting, and entreating; 
but with all their exertions the ship would not stir. Again and 
again were the props examined — again and again was every ob- 
structing chip cut through ; the stubborn hull refused to move, 
and the affair looked as hopeless as the Great Eastern after her 
first failure. The great captain and his crew of boys began to 
run backwards and forwards in the endeavour to get the necessary 
impetus ; then they all assembled at the end next the sea, and 
began to jump, though I observed the captain soon left off the 
unwonted exercise. At last a slight stir-was perceptible in the 
mighty mass : 

" She starts, she moves, she seems to feel 
The thrill of life along her keel ; 
And spurning with her foot the ground, 
With an exulting, joyous bound, 
She leaps into the ocean's arms ! " 

and amidst the shouts of the spectators the Zouave was fairly 
launched. Then followed the congratulations of the shipwright's 
friends and his family ; and finally, as the morning was advancing, 
they all betook themselves to their breakfast. 

After a few weeks more of finishing, the vessel was sent to sea, 
and we followed her with our eyes till she was out of sight. 
What a masterpiece of human ingenuity is a ship ! Even the 
building of a cathedral, with all its complexities, will scarcely vie 
with it in the amount of labour in the different departments; 
and it is not unreasonable to suppose that if all the different 
kinds of work required in the building of a man-of-war were to 
be done at the same time and place, the cathedral would be found 
to be the more easily accomplished of the two. 

But what became of the lazy one who would not take the 

o 



98 MYRTLES AND ALOES, 

trouble to come down the hill to see the sight ? Truth compels 
me to state that she rested on her elbow in bed, and saw the 
whole as well as we did ! Now was not this too bad, and a direct 
encouragement to laziness ? But we were all involved in the 
same blunder, for we had never calculated the advantage which 
the lofty hill on which her house was built would give her over 
our own more lowly situation, and she, until she saw the vessel 
moving, never knew that the shipwrights' yard was visible from 
her window. I think my readers will give me credit for candour 
after this confession ! 



CHAPTER XY. 

The country on the immediately opposite side of the estuary must 
not be omitted, for without passing the ferry the town cannot 
fairly be appreciated, neither can Bingrone — the seat of Lord 
Kingsale, nor the Castle, nor even Cliff House and Woodville, be 
estimated at their just meed of beauty. ^ 

We used to walk with our friend from Portlemouth Bectory on 
the lofty hills overlooking the mouth of the harbour whence we 
beheld one day the loveliest colouring imaginable. From some 
peculiarity in the atmosphere, the sea, hills, and shadows on the 
rocks were of a greenish indigo colour, the sky rather yellow in 
its tinge, and the whole reminding one strongly of some of Eichard 
"Wilson's pictures, which had hitherto appeared rather mysterious 
to me. I once saw the rocks on the Dartmouth river appear of a 
coppery purple tinge from the same cause. 

Passing round the end of Limebury Point, opposite the Castle, 

we find a small shed containing a cannon and a few dozen of 

36-pounder balls, to be used for the defence of the entrance of the 

harbour. I am afraid the Jean Bart or La Gloire would make 

light of them if she came with hostile intent to the peaceful town. 

The preventive-men are required to practise a certain number of 

times in the year, and the reverberation of the cannon amongst 

the rocks is very fine, but it would not be pleasant to be walking 

there at the time, for the concussion must be fearful. I remember 

the feeling experienced whilst sketching with a friend upon a hill 

below the town of Chepstow. All of a sudden a shock, more 
LofC. 



100 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

startling than a box on the ear, made me turn to my companion, 
and before we could speak, a loud report and the smoke issuing 
from some rocks far from where we were seated, announced that 
an explosion had taken place, which at the time was rather alarm- 
ing to our inexperience. 

The mark at which the preventive-men fire is a target of white 
cloth between two or three patches of white paint, on the rocks 
of the opposite side just beyond Splat Cove. 

Passing Limebury Point we continue by the preventive-men's 
walk to ascend higher and higher on the cliff. Below, the rock 
is bare at low water for a considerable space, and we could see 
the sheep descending from the cliffs to crop the Pueus Caniculatus 
which grew there abundantly. Here too we saw many of the 
pretty rock pools which I have already described. 

A little further on we have to make a considerable circuit to 
avoid a deep chasm called Frenchman's Hole, from the fact of a 
Prench vessel having been driven into it in a storm, and there 
dashed to pieces without the possibility of rescue, as is the case 
with almost all accidents on this terrific coast. This place, like 
Splat Cove, is the scene of an abortive commencement of an iron 
mine, and a sort of rough- hewn arch is all that is left to testify to 
the fact. 

Lying on the ground in this locality I once found that un- 
accountable implement, the stone celt. It was not a very perfect 
one, and the marks of chipping were visible upon it. How long 
had it lain there ? or why there at all ? Are auy of the present 
inhabitants of Portlemouth or the neighbourhood descended from 
him who made it ? What changes of kingdoms and overthrows 
of dynasties have taken place since this implement was formed in 
ages so remote that antiquaries in despair of fixing an accurate 
date content themselves with calling it the "stone period !" Our 
readers may not know that since the above was written celts have 
attained a great distinction, being supposed by a recent writer to 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 101 

have been fashioned by a race of beings anterior to the usually 
received account of Creation, and called by him "Pre- Adamite 
man." 

I am told that one very remarkable specimen now belongs to 
an antiquary in the city of Norwich, having been purchased by 
his sagacious wife at an auction with sundry flat irons and kitchen 
utensils in an old coal-box for half-a-crown ! the lady of course 
bidding for the lot as a matter of mere household thrift ! 

Continuing our walk, and scrambling on the higher ledges of 
the cliffs, we gain a beautiful view of the bay enclosed by the 
Bolt Head, and the rocks and coves which I have mentioned in 
our walk to Sewer Mill Cove in a former chapter. Occasionally 
we are compelled to mount the eartheif^alls which separate the 
boundaries of property; and after many an unexpected vista of 
beauty, we find ourselves ascending by a foot-path to the Gaytor 
Bock, or Bickham Station, as it is called, from the name of the 
hamlet of Portlemouth in which it is situated. It is one of the 
loneliest spots imaginable, and tolerable only on account of being 
composed of several cottages, the abodes of the men, under the 
same line of roof with their chief. We heard terrible complaints 
of its dreariness from the gentleman who was at that time in 
command; for, having seen much service in India and other parts 
of the world, he was proportionably ennuye at such a locality. 
To be sure, the houses were duller than need be from being 
debarred by a wall from the sight of the scenery with which they 
were surrounded; such protection from the high winds which 
blew from the sea being absolutely necessary, so that they had 
not even the Irishman's consolation in the prospect of " one ship 
out of sight." The men had a kind of burrow in the rock on 
which their flag-staff was fixed, to which they used to retire when 
on the look-out, but their families might as well live in a street 
for all they could see of the prospect. "A house to let" would 
have been a comparatively lively object ; for even that has been 



102 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

lately shown, in the hands of an imaginative writer, to be capa- 
ble of affording room for the most interesting speculations. 

Mazely Cove, beyond the Moor Sands, was the most interesting 
object, and accessible only from the land side. Here was a cavern, 
formed by the slip of some of the upper rocks, which would con- 
tain several people. I have been in it several times, but never 
could entirely divest myself of the idea that as it had slipped once 
it might do so again ; and what if I were in it ! This little cove 
was frequented by people from a considerable distance for the 
sake of the beautiful white sand, which is so scarce an article on 
that coast ; but it could only be brought to the top by donkeys, 
and it was wonderful to see how the poor creatures picked their 
way round the projecting pieces of rock which rendered the path 
so difficult, never stumbling, but with true philosophy making the 
best of their untoward circumstances. This place a friend very 
properly called the " Pandemonium of animals," from the hard 
nature of the work they had to perform. A little labour would 
have made at least a tolerable path for these willing animals ; but 
as usual, what was every one's business in this case was no one's 
business, and the poor beasts were allowed to spend double the 
necessary time and strength in their journey. Bad economy, one 
would think. 

Beyond Mazely Cove is Prawle Point, a fine headland running 
into the sea for a considerable distance, and forming, with Bolt 
Head at the opposite extremity, the bay to which the Salcombe 
estuary is the inlet into the country. Here the cliffs seem to 
break down suddenly, and the whole country has that let down 
effect which the under-cliff of the Isle of Wight displays, but 
without its fertility, for Prawle is the most dreary and treeless 
place imaginable. There is a station subordinate to that of 
Bickham, where we rested ourselves for a while at Mr. Pengelly, 
the chief boatman's, house, who with great politeness insisted on 
removing from his table a most beautiful auricula in full flower to 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 103 

a place where I could not see it, in order to afford a resting place 
to uiy sketching implements, notwithstanding my entreaties to the 
contrary. In spite of his hearty welcome and reiterated invitations 
to repeat our visit, we never had the courage to return to Prawle, 
though after a long absence from wild scenery even that dreary 
place would have charms in our eyes. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CONCLUSION. 

Spring with its charming associations and opening flowers was 
now ripening into summer, and it was not without regret that 
we saw the lengthened days which gave promise of so much 
enjoyment, but which announced to us that our stay in this 
delightful locality was drawing to a close. Each favourite scene 
had to be re-visited and explored, and we experienced the truth 
of Dr. Johnson's saying, that we never do anything consciously 
for the last time without some feeling of regret. I need not 
describe how we lingered at each winding of our favourite road, 
nor how late was our return to our home every evening. A long 
day was to be spent at Portlemouth Rectory, which, however, the 
weather marred a little, but gave the more time for the conversa- 
tion, which even now revives pleasant thoughts. Alas, that she 
who formed the sunshine of that shady place should now live only 
in our memories! Our return was marked by a circumstance 
which I never before witnessed. The water in the harbour was 
full of Medusas, which, when disturbed by the ferryman's oar, 
reminded us of that beautiful passage in the Ancient Mariner 
so beloved by all marine naturalists — 

" Within the shadow of the ship 
I watched their rich attire : 
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 
They coiled and swam, and every track 
Was a flash of living fire. 

O happy living things ! no tongue 
This beauty might declare." 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 105 

So charming was the sight that I could willingly have stayed 
hours to enjoy it. 

I do not think the inhabitants of Salcombe had any idea how 
we had as it were grown into the place ; and they could hardly 
give us credit for sincerity in our expressions of regret at leaving 
it. Not so our friend Mr. Strong. He understood our feelings, 
and felt within himself to a degree with which we were unac- 
quainted at the time that, in his case at least, our parting would 
be a final one in this world. His anticipations were correct : a 
few letters passed between us, and after about four months we 
were informed that he had departed this life. Peace be to his 
memory ! 

Many of our aged friends have since cleparted, and cannot be 
recognised by my description; but if the reader will take the 
trouble, he may easily verify all that has been said of the scenery 
and natural history of the place, which alone has been my object 
in writing this little sketch. Any person wishing for a few weeks 
of quiet retirement would do well to visit Salcombe, especially if 
he be artistically or zoologically inclined ; and of late the commu- 
nication has been made more easy by a steamer which plies twice 
a week from Plymouth to Kingsbridge, and which sets down at 
Salcombe. There is also another, the Queen, which plies between 
Kingsbridge and Salcombe — a great convenience compared with 
the market boats I alluded to in the commencement of this work. 
I have also learnt that a preliminary meeting has been held to 
take measures for securing railway communication with the South 
Devon line, and the " Salcombes " are not the people to let a 
thing slip through their fingers. 



I lay down my pen with regret, for many pleasing reminis- 
cences have revived whilst writing these pages ; and I shall 
consider myself happy if the narration of our visit to the South 

p 



106 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

Devon coast shall stimulate any one else to the enjoyment of the 
cheap and healthy pleasures which are so bountifully provided for 
all who have the desire to partake of them. 

Since the foregoing was written I am informed that the railway 
scheme has failed, owing to the opposition of the Torquay and 
Dartmouth people— jealous, as we may well suppose them to be, 
of the rivalry which a new town would cause to their interests. 
In a commercial point of view, this is to be regretted ; but surely 
it is well to keep some favoured spots sacred from the incursions 
of tourists and would-be botanists, who carry off everything that 
takes their fancy, leaving nothing in exchange but empty ginger 
beer bottles, broken egg shells, orange peel, and paper bags giving 
evidence of having been exploded with a loud report, which, in 
some society, is considered an appropriate termination to a picnic 
entertainment. Let us therefore hope that, in this case at least, 
" Whatever is is right ! " 



Notice. — It has been deemed expedient to add a short account of Kings- 
bridge and its vicinity to the graphic sheets of " Myrtles and Aloes " ; the 
following supplementary pages, under the title of " Kingsbeedge," have there- 
fore been furnished by Mr. Francis Young, lately a resident among us, and a 
native of this town. The illustrations are from the clever and facile pencil of 
Miss Tregelles. — The Publisher. 



KINGSBRIDGE. 

CHAPTER I. 

A ROUND-ABOUT CHAPTER. 

In the first chapter of " Myrtles and AIojjs" cursory mention has 
been made of a town in the extreme south of Devon known by 
the name of Kingsbridge to Rowland Hill and his myrmidons of 
the Post Office, the inhabitants thereof, and all persons interested 
therein, directly or indirectly, by one or other of the countless ties 
that serve to attach every member of the human race more closely 
to some particular locality than to another. 

It is of this town that the ruthless and unrelenting publisher of 
the " Salcombe Sketch Book/' metaphorically seizing me by the 
collar arid pinning me into a corner, from which I have no escape, 
has demanded a descriptive chapter as a supplementary appendage 
to the preceding lively pages, which glow with life-like descriptions 
of the wonders of the shore, lanes, banks and hedges, highways 
and byeways, that encompass and radiate from Salcombe in all 
directions, undique et passim. 

Perhaps a reader (if readers ever do soliloquize over a book, 
which I very much doubt) will, in language and mood befitting 
that burly bear with heart of sterling gold, "the great Lexico- 
grapher," as Miss Pinkerton delighted to style him, snarlingly 
carp and gird at me, suggesting that I am an impudent dog, and, 
like Captain Macheath, "a bold man" to add the coarse free 
dashes of my verbiage to the pretty pre-raphaelesque word paint- 



108 MYKTLES AND ALOES. 

ings of the accomplished lady who has treated of the rural beauties 
and sea-side glories of Salcombe with eloquence enough, one would 
think, to make even Peter Bell himself turn botanist, geologist, 
phytologist, el omne quod exit in ist. Reader ! I acknowledge 
the impeachment. Wincing under your gimlet-like glance, which 
betokens anything but favourable criticism of pages to come, I 
decidedly cry Peccavi. To the lady I take off my hat, and in 
humility pray pardon for my presumption : to yourself, my 
thoughts recurring to the pages of that Latin grammar which 
was so skilfully and indelibly ground into me at the Grammar 
School, Kingsbridge, I groan Tarce miki ! to both I say, heap 
Pelion on Ossa of reproach on Mr. G. P. Friend, for has he not 
pulled me neck and ears into this scrape ? He can, however, bear 
sufficient for himself and for me, to whom remaineth yet this con- 
solatory knowledge that he is a gallant Yolunteer, slow to defy, 
yet skilled to defend ; which gives me, his scribe, courage to tread 
on my way rejoicing, and comforted by the knowledge that, if 
accidentally I raise a storm about my ears, it is around his 
auricular organs that the wind and war of words must rave and 
dash. 

Why the town was called Kingsbridge nobody knows, not even 
Risdon or Polwhele, Bryce or Dr. Oliver, my worthy schoolmate, 
the professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, or any 
other authority great in Devonshire antiquarian lore : I must not 
add that nobody cares, for I myself must confess to a strong 
craving for that piece of knowledge. Perchance, in time, the 
mystery will be unveiled by the discovery of an old chronicle, 
laboriously written and illuminated by a monk of Buckfastleigh, 
setting forth how sundry dwellers in the ville some thousand years 
since seeing the Saxon monarch of the day, while making a pro- 
gress through the western part of his dominion, standing dubiously 
on the muddy edge of the morass through which the brook Dod 
slowly oozed on its way to ocean, leaped with Raleigh -like gal- 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 109 

lantry into the slush, and standing obverse to reverse with bended 
backs, after the manner of urchins at leap-frog, bridged the dank 
quagmire, and so gave passage to the monarch, sans soiled shoes 
and hose, into his loyal town, to be by royal decree hereafter 
known by the name of Kyngysbrygge. And here, Mr. Friend, 
you should insert a graphic portraiture of the performance, the 
actors therein having dislocated necks and arms and legs, after 
the manner of saints and heroes pictured in monkish missals and 
the illustrated chronicles of early times. 

The parish of Kingsbridge is one of the smallest, if not indeed 
the least, of the many parishes of Devonshire : its whole superficial 
content is about two or three and thirty (acres. The town is built 
on a dorsal ridge of land, sloping on the west to a rivulet, which 
separates it from the parish of West Alvington, and on the east 
to the stream Dod, which divides it from the neighbouring parish 
of Dodbrooke. A stranger sojourning awhile in Kingsbridge at 
the King's Arms, an excellent hotel, under the careful guardian- 
ship of Mr. Robert Foale, who grows his own lemons for punch 
and other delightful acidulated alcoholic compounds, hateful to 
declamatory teetotallers as scarlet to bellowing and iracund bull, 
would, on emerging from that good house of entertainment for 
man and beast, find himself on a level part of the street a little 
above the centre of the same, which runs nearly due north and 
south, and is called, in common with the chief streets of a large 
proportion of English towns, Fore Street : looking to his right, 
he will see the whole extent of the town to the north, terminated 
by a double toll bar, whereat, under the authority of the Turnpike 
Trust, who make a very nice per-centage on their investment, to 
the detriment and disgust of Her Majesty's liege subjects, travel- 
lers are despoiled and eased of sundry small coin by an Argus- 
eyed janitor previous to proceeding either on the road leading to 
Loddiswell and the Kingsbridge .Road Station, or on that which 
runs into it at right angles, passing the newly-built parsonage 



110 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

house, and forming the high way to Aveton Gifford, Modbury, 
and Plymouth. 

If he be inclined to get an appetite for his dinner, and do justice 
to the savoury roast and boiled provided by the host of the King's 
Arms, he cannot do better than take a morning walk towards this 
end of the town, and stroll along the Plymouth road ; a couple of 
miles, up hill and thorough collar work all the way, will bring 
him to Churchstow, the vicar of which holds ecclesiastical sway 
over Kingsbridge also, under the style of Yicar of Churchstow- 
czm-Kingsbridge. He will not perhaps be particularly pleased 
with the appearance of Churchstow village, which is far from 
prepossessing, but he will be amply repaid for his long climb by 
the many pretty peeps of the estuary that he will gain on his 
return at various turnings of the winding road. About a mile or 
less from Kingsbridge he should turn to his left, and, passing an 
old barn, make his way into a long rough pass, known, I believe, 
from its sequestered position, as Love Lane: certainly the ups 
and downs of this deep rutted cart path would tend to tumble a 
fond pair into delightful proximity at every step, and make the 
walk a sort of oak and ivy business, not for you stout and respect- 
able visitor in broadcloth, but for Strephon and Phyllis, Corydon 
and Daphne, from the town, who pair off to these secluded resorts 
about seven o'clock of a summer's eve, and build castles in the 
air of the bliss of their coming happiness — realised, alas ! in how 
few cases, as wedded life doth often sadly witness. After quitting 
the Plymouth road for about two hundred yards or more, turning 
again to his right, and treading gingerly for his corns' sake, he 
will enter this, to him, via dolorosa, but if his name be Sam, he 
may appeal to himself in Christy Minstrel phraseology, for here 
he will get the best view of the estuary that can possibly be found, 
the land-locked expanse of water looking at full tide, like a glassy 
lake, broken perhaps by the paddle-wheels of the busy Queen, with 
the dark woods of Halwell fringing its margin in the distance, the 




&wptrU<J£^ Urru ?or^^^^ 




MYRTLES AND ALOES. Ill 

square towers of Portsmouth and Charleton and the pointed 
steeple of Malborough breaking the undulating outline of the 
surrounding hills, the little dockyard and the jutting headlands of 
Gerston coming prominently into the centre of the picture, the 
foreground of which is richly filled with bosky masses of trees, 
through which gleams here and there the blue slate roofing of the 
buildings of the town and the white octagonal spire of the parish 
church. 

Turning with reluctance from this view with a last look at the 
craggy profile of Bolt Head, rearing itself in the midst of the long 
line of land which hides the sparkling waters of the Channel from 
the gaze, he will gain the Loddiswell ^oad, after his troublous 
passage through Love Lane, not failing to look at Combe Royal 
on the left, shrouded in noble timber, with its ivy-circled lodge 
and bricken orangery, in which all fruits of this description thrive 
through the winter, as if in their native clime, unprotected by 
glass. This desirable residence (in auctioneering phraseology) 
belongs to John Luscombe, Esquire, whose extreme fondness for 
the gardener's art and the floral gifts of nature has led him to 
make the surrounding grounds as beautiful as they are. 

Crossing the Loddiswell road our peripatetic friend must again 
do violence to his joints and feelings by plunging down a precipi- 
tous descent into the continuation of Love Lane, which now 
changes its amatory appellation for the less agreeable one of 
Darky : he will soon pass Well House, which was at one time 
(like the old poor-house at Charleton, now a barn and a good one, 
too) evidently a monastic house of call, probably an appanage of 
the Abbacy of Buckfastleigh, and regain Fore Street by turning 
to his right and wending his way through Duncombe Street, 
formerly (according to Mr. Abraham Hawkins, to whose history 
of Kingsbridge I am entirely indebted for the very few facts that 
may garnish these pages) dignified by the strange title of Sigdure 
Lane, which far from euphuistic designation after a while collapsed 



112 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

into Sugar Lane, a miserable misnomer, for a house stood and yet 
stands there, the abode of successive generations of cow-keepers, 
to which broad-chested glossy specimens of the bovine race repair 
as regularly as morn and dewy eve successively arrive, and — I 
don't like walking through thoroughfares frequented by cows ! 
that's all, Mr. Friend. 

Pore Street, towards its southern extremity, is crossed by Mill 
Street and "Duke Street, in olden time Duck Street. Mill Street, 
so named from the Town Mills, formerly used as a woollen manu- 
factory for blankets, serges, &c, now turned into corn mills 
worked by steam power, leads directly through another judiciously 
situated trap of the Turnpike Trust to the high road to Salcombe 
through "West Alvington and Malborough. Another road, skirt- 
ing the gardens of Quay House, and entering Mill Street by the 
turnpike on the left, also brings us to Salcombe by Tacket Wood, 
Collapit, and Gerston, the property and, until lately, the residence 
of the Bastards of Kitley, since the days of the Conqueror. On 
the left of this road, about half way between Kingsbridge and 
Salcombe, stands Uton, known also as Castle, where, in the time 
of the troubles, stood a strongly-built square tower, buttressed and 
flanked with towers, in which (some time during the siege of Fort 
Charles, while Colonel Ralph Weldon, of Plymouth, was doing 
his best to knock it about the ears of its governor, the gallant 
Sir Edmund Fortescue, and his little garrison) loyal William 
Randall, of Mill, in the parish of Stokenhara, who 

" struck for the King, 



Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing," 

was imprisoned, bullied, and for some time daily threatened with 
death by some buff-coated lambs of Oliver Cromwell, under the 
command of " one Goram," who had previously harried his home- 
stead, wounding to death his daughter Katharine, whose tomb, 
with some quaintly expressed lines cut thereon, may still be seen 
in Stokenham churchyard. 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 113 

Duke Street and Duncombe Street form the principal links of 
communication between the component parts of the " dual town 
of Kingsbridge and Dodbrooke " (I quote from an advertisement 
of a great writer and professor of elocution lately resident in 
Kingsbridge) separated by the purling brook Dod. Of Dod- 
brooke little can be said in description. Passing through Duke 
Street, and leaving the iron foundry of Mr. John Lidstone on the 
left and the King of Prussia on the right, we come upon a broad 
and open space of sloping ground, on which the monthly cattle 
market is held. Immediately before us is an ugly block of 
building which ought to be tumbled over, neck and crop, to make 
room for a corn exchange for the stout (Squires and yeomen that 
frequent Dodbrooke market, and a drinking fountain for thirsty 
drovers and panting beasts, which some energetic disciple of 
Eather Matthew will doubtless be glad to present. I daresay the 
proprietor of the block in question, and possibly the landlords of 
the White Lion and King of Prussia, and other minor publics 
in the neighbourhood, if there be any, will receive my suggestions 
with a howl of contempt and derision; but are not these real 
Dodbrooke wants, and projects to be taken into due consideration 
by farmers, inhabitants, and wrathful proprietor of unseemly lump 
of board, bricks, and mortar? The site is well suited for the 
purpose, and the building would form an ornament to the town 
and a better way of entrance to Ebrington Street, the mention of 
which brings vividly before my eyes the celebration of the peace 
festivities at the close of the war with Russia, when the whole 
population of the parish made it a dining-room for the nonce, and 
the lord and master of the Phoenix Brewery, chief ruler of the 
borough of Dodbrooke at that time, portly, majestic, and ample 
in form, beaming with baronial grace, urbanity, and condescen- 
sion, enthroned on a dais, crowned the long vista of groaning 
tables, and gallantly led the perspiring carvers to the attack on 
the Malakhoffs of beef and Mamelons of pudding, which rapidly 



114 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

disappeared under the onslaught, renewed and renewed again, of 
well-hinged jaws, that seemed like openings of yawning pits that 
were verily bottomless. 

Leaving the scene of former feasting, and crossing the slope on 
which the sheep-pens are pitched on market days, we must walk 
carefully along a bank on the right side of the road, destitute of 
fence or hand-rail, which rises in one part to a height suggestive 
and provocative of broken bones, and winch, perhaps, will be 
duly fortified when a waywarden has fallen therefrom, and has 
sustained compound fracture of the thigh, dislocation of the 
shoulder, and broken half a dozen ribs ; as railway trains will be 
so managed as to give the guard access to every part at pleasure 
as soon as a bishop has been burnt therein — a benefit to those 
that travel by land which I devoutly hope will be brought about 
by other means than grilling any mitred occupant of the bench 
episcopal, although one has already been within an ace of meeting 
with that unhappy fate. 

But we are running away at full speed from our muttons, and 
it behoves us to return instantly to the same. Threading the 
bank of which we have spoken, and stopping a moment to glance 
at the parish pound, that occasional haven of rest for hard-worked 
donkeys, and Athenaeum Terrace, which stands on the site of the 
old poor-house of Dodbrooke, and to note the surpassing archi- 
tectural beauty of the British School, we arrive at a triangular 
island of houses, surrounded entirely by macadamised roads, the 
base of which is known as Batt's Lane, and the apex towards the 
east distinguished as Bellow's Nose. A few minutes' walk still 
eastward from this point brings us to Bell Cross gate and two 
roads, one to the north, leading to Totnes and Dartmouth, the 
other to the east, forming an approach to the endless ramifications 
and turnings and crossings of Devonshire lanes that lie between 
Kingsbridge and Dodbrooke and broad Start Bay. 

And here we may well stroll through the shady lane encircling 



MIRTLES AND ALOES. 115 

Dodbrooke Bectory and its sequestered grounds, and linger in the 
quiet churchyard, belted with lofty elms, wherein must slumber 
among the immortal dead, until God's Great Assize, many a one 
that we have known and loved and honoured. 'Twould not be 
amiss to sit there for a while on a rounded boss of turf, spangled 
with modest daisies, and, apart from the world and worldly 
thoughts, still as the silent occupant of the hollow bed below, 
wrapt in the deep long sleep of peace — to last how long, God 
knoweth — to muse on solemn subjects which the scene may well 
suggest, and then to quit the sacred precincts of the hallowed 
spot with Faith in God and in His Word, renewed and strength- 
ened ; with Hope for the coming f utuS^ in this world, and that 
to come hereafter, bursting from the dormant bud into bloom 
giving promise of fair fruit ; and with Charity towards all men, 
(for who is not our neighbour?) especially towards those with 
whom we hold daily and hourly intercourse, increased, not seven 
times, but seventy times sevenfold. 

Yes ! Mr. Eeader, I know 1 have not the privilege of writing 
Reverend before my name; I am well aware that I have merely 
been asked to scribble a few pages of gossip (not scandal though) 
about Kingsbridge, and therefore have no business at all to vary 
my theme with anything that looks like sermonizing. What? 
you should think so ? you have quite enough of that on Sundays ? 
Well, I daresay you have : I will try not to offend again. Eh ! 
grumbling again ! you hope I won't go taking people's names in 
vain and a]l that sort of stupid thing ; but if I will take those 
liberties, your advice is (that is, if Til take a fool's advice, and a 
nod's as good as a wink to a blind man, or ought to be at all 

events) — 

Touch 'em up tenderly ! 

Treat 'em with care ! 
Don't rub them up 

The wrong way of the hair ! 

Certainly not, cher lecteur, I will promise to dance as deftly as 



116 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

aiiy saltimbanque among the tender points of my old friends and 
neighbours ; and if I must needs call any to the front by name, I 
will not tread on the least of their mental corns. I will spring 
as nimbly and as harmlessly among their little weaknesses as ever 
Baron Nathan, of Eosherville celebrity, leapt among his eggs and 
china tea service. Feeling that 1 live in a glass house myself, 
indeed, quite a Crystal Palace of a vitreous building, I will take 
care how I throw the smallest pebble at my neighbours' panes, 
lest vengeance come upon me, and mine be smashed by a retalia- 
tive rain of bricks and paving stones. 

Surely I digress to an extent unpardonable; and, instead of 
going straight to the mark like the tapering arrows of the fair 
members of the Kingsbridge Archery Club, hoping to hit, as I 
would fain do, the golden bull's-eye of success, I follow a zig-zag 
path in all directions, like a billiard ball about the board of green 
cloth. But is not this a round-about chapter, in which we arc 
making the grand tour of Kingsbridge and its environs, and may 
not the erratic windings of our path plead an excuse for the 
erratic wandering of my pen ? Allons done, let us get then, not 
out of the frying-pan into the fire, as I am likely to do if I will 
persist in talking about that which has nothing whatever to do 
with Kingsbridge, but out of Dodbrooke churchyard into the 
Rectory lane, and thence down an incline not quite as perpen- 
dicular as the wall of a house into a rich valley, in which stands 
Washbrook Mill. You will justly think that our walk is a prac- 
tical exposition of that pleasing nursery ditty, " Here we go up, 
up, up, and here we go down, down, down"; and you will be 
confirmed and strengthened in your opinion ere we finish our 
perambulation. 'Excelsior must again be our watchword; and, 
hoping to escape the fate of the aspiring young gentleman who 
bore that strange device upon his banner, we must struggle up 
the stony steep until we reach a point where our road strikes into 
another crossing it nearly at right angles, of which the part to 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 117 

our right will bring us into Dodbrooke again by Buttville, the 
property of Stuart Hawkins, Esquire — Foxhole, an ivy-draped 
cottage, with a cosy, comfortable, retiring look of snngness about 
it — and Boxhill, a villa residence ensconced in an acre or two of 
pleasant grounds; while the other to our left will bring us to 
Shindle Mill and another road leading to Kingsbridge on the 
right, the hedges of which attract and repel the olfactory attention 
of passers-by with a profuse display of scented blue and white 
violets, and the most unsavoury wild garlic that the nose of man, 
woman, or child ever smelt. 

We will not take either of these routes to re-enter our town, but 
do a little bit of trespass, regardless of the interests of Mr. Steer, 
over High-house estate, which we gain b^ crossing the road from 
the coin of vantage on which we have been resting after our late 
ascent up Washbrook hill, and entering a gate a little to the left 
of us on the opposite side. After crossing one or two fields, and 
gaining the path running along the ridge of the hill immediately 
above High-house and the farm-house and courtlage of the estate, 
we get a pretty panoramic view of the estuary towards Salcombe. 
A ramble through the fields that lie around and below us, between 
our present position and the western shores of "the river," so 
called by the natives, will afford many pleasing changes in the 
spreading scene ; at one point we overlook Charleton Bridge, that 
spans the arm of water which pierces the land as far as Shindle 
Mill, and there receives the trout stream that runs through a long 
line of green meadows under Bearscombe, Eanscombe, Buckland, 
and Meet ; at another, the busy ship-yard of Mr. Date, who has 
turned out many a clean-built clipper for the fruit trade, and long 
may he live to build many such specimens of England's merchant 
navy as the Excelsior, Elinor, and Annie Grant, to his own profit 
and the profit of shareholders, ship's husbands, captains, mates, 
sailors, and cabin boys, and all others more or less interested 
in the well-being of the Kingsbridge fleet. Turning from the 



118 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

ship-yard and leaving it directly in our rear, we shall come into a 
lane leading to High-house and soon stand on the summit of Lox 
Hill, the descent of which, mollified a little by a set of steps worn 
into the hard soil through the springy turf by many a pair of feet 
encased in all varieties of boots from the pert Balmoral to the 
sturdy Blucher, will bring us with trembling knees and aching 
ancle-joints into the main road in front of the cottage I have men- 
tioned, called Foxhole. Passing this, and turning to our left down 
a narrow lane dark with the shade of overhanging firs, we come 
into the only nearly level road that can be found in the vicinity of 
Kingsbridge. We have already seen, from High-house estate, 
glimpses of this road, which will take us by the New Quay Inn, 
*&/ Crab Shell, and Mr. Date's yard to Charleton Bridge, and thence 
to Torcross and Slapton Sands (both to be marked with a white 
mark for possessing capital hotels, with a most civil and obliging 
hostess ruling that in the first-named place, and a host with ditto 
qualities reigning over that in the second; choice resorts for anglers 
and fishers of fish in salt and fresh waters), through a succession 
of villages, gemmed here and there with brilliant flower knots in 
road- side gardens, known as West Charleton, East Charleton, 
Erogmore, Chillington, and Stokenham. We will not take a 
turn bridge-wards now, but, merely observing that it is the road 
along which the needful daily constitutional is regularly taken by 
many of the good folks of Kingsbridge, saunter leisurely towards 
the town across the Quay by Glena, Victoria Place, Pindar Lodge, 
South Place, and the saw-pits and coal-stores of Messrs. P. H. 
Pox & Co. The southern entrance to the town is carefully 
guarded by two temples of drink, offering a prompt and ready 
resting place to weary wayfarers : the Ship and Plough, kept by 
a stout active little publican, known in the vernacular as e Sippern 
Hellit/ which, when translated, means Cyprian Elliott, and last, 
not least, the Anchor Hotel, a phoenix of an establishment that 
has risen from the modest two-story public known of old as the 



MYETLES AND ALOES. 119 

Blue Anchor, in which a Volunteer now holds sway over tap and 
spigot — host Richard Horswill, a soldier every inch of him, who 
will tell you many a tale of his experiences on the frozen steppes 
of the Crimea, the parched plains of India, and the flowery land 
of China, whenever you will step in and taste his white ale, of 
which delectable beverage more anon. Opposite the Anchor, on 
the left, our eyes wander along a dead wall, enclosing an excellent 
house, flanked with shrubberies, which commands from its upper 
windows a beautiful view of the estuary. This formerly belonged 
to a worthy old gentleman, Roger Ilbert Prideaux : at his death 
it passed, by purchase, into the hands of the late Mr. Samuel 
Beer, whose son now resides there. But lo ! we are at the 
bottom of Fore Street : it is time to clcke this round-about chap- 
ter, and see what points of local interest demand a careful notice 
in our next. 



CHAPTER II. 

MR. NOTEWORTHy's CORNER. 

To have Mr. Friend's diaholus hard on my haunches, to find him 
perpetually treading on my heels to the abrasion and deplorable 
discomfort of the same, while I am turning out all the old drawers 
and nooks of memory's bureau to see what I can drag into day- 
light again respecting Kingsbridge, is a thing grievous to be 
borne. It must, however, be my endeavour for a season to ap- 
pease the greed of the said inky imp for copy, and to be careful 
too how I bespatter him with hard names, lest, in remembrance of 
the wrong, he pelt me with " pie " next time I adventure myself 
into the Gazette Office. 

Let us look leisurely up and down and backwards and forwards 
through the length and breadth of Kingsbridge, and see what jot- 
tings of fact and romance can be set down in Mr. Noteworthy' s cor- 
ner concerning the more goodly and notable buildings of the town, 
whether they be public or private, lay or ecclesiastic, in character. 
Certes ! there is nothing to be said about the Vicarage, save that 
it bears an air of comfortable substantiality about it which causes 
it to appear to be a most delectable dwelling-house : the turnpike 
house, too, is barren and unprofitable ; but not so Knowle House, 
which must be remembered as the residence of Colonel Montague, 
F.L.S. and M.W.S., an ardent and accomplished naturalist, author 
of the Ornithological Dictionary, Testacea Britannica, and other 
works. The large and valuable collection of animals and birds 
which the scientific Colonel had gathered during the last sixteen 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 121 

3'ears of his life at Kingsbridge, after quitting the army in 
1799, was purchased at his death for £1100, by Dr. W. E. 
Leach, P. R. S., and placed in the British Museum, where 
it remains until this day. Below Prospect House, a narrow 
building with a long frontage, commanding a good view of the 
estuary, stands the conduit and engine house, which was inhabited 
by a family some seven or eight and twenty years ago, instead of 
a fire engine and leathern buckets as at present. Before this 
house there used, at the time I have mentioned, to prowl perpe- 
tually a dark-looking half-shaven man in grey, who was, in fact, 
the chief terror of my youthful existence. I believe he lived in 
the old poor-house of Kingsbridge, which stood nearly on the 
opposite side of the road, and was known by the name of Will 
Yincent. He had been a sailor, and, if I remember rightly, he 
had lost his wits after undergoing the barbarous punishment of 
keel-hauling, a mode of punishment now obsolete, luckily enough 
for unruly members of the British mercantile marine, which was 
inflicted by lowering the unhappy offender, secured along a stout 
cable, over the bows of the ship, and causing him to scrape 
acquaintance with every inch of the keel, until he had cleared the 
rudder, and was free to re- visit the deck again by a rough passage 
over the stern, full of salt water, and three parts dead at least. 
After passing Lower Knowle, Barnfield Cottage, and Tressilian, 
we come to Yine House on the left hand and on the right the 
Grammar School. Justice Hawkins mentions a house on the 
right, or west, side of the street, " which was once a banqueting 
house, where the Abbot of Buckfast used to keep Lent " ; but I 
am unable to identify it with any existing building, or, indeed, 
with any building since destroyed, unless it be the old poor-house, 
which has been turned into the houses nOw occupied by Mr. King, 
stone mason, and Mr. Adams, carpenter, at the top of the town. 
The Endowed Grammar School, over which the Eev. A. Middle- 
ton now presides, is a stone building fronting the street, having 

B, 



122 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

the head master's private residence at the north end, with magni- 
ficent dormitories, calculated to accommodate forty boarders, in a 
wing behind, built from the head master's part of the house in a 
direction parallel to the school-room, looking over the valley that 
divides Kingsbridge from West Alvington, towards the Union. 
There is a good play-ground with covered shed and garden 
behind the house. The school-room extends the whole length 
of the street frontage, excepting the north gable, and is said to 
be built on the model of the large school-room at Eton. Access 
to the school from the street is obtained up a flight of stairs 
from an arched entrance, with double doors, over which is the 
following inscription, cut in stone, " This Grammar School was 
Built and Endowed 1670, By Thomas Crispin, of the City of 
Exon, Fuller, who was born in This Town the 6 of Jan. 1607-8. 
Lord, what I have 'twas thou that gavest me, And of thine owne 
I this return to thee." A full-length portrait of this worthy 
benefactor of his native town, beautifully executed, the artist's 
name, I regret to say, unknown, hangs on the staircase of the 
head master's residence. It was formerly kept in the school- 
room ; and was removed to its present position when the north 
gable was re-built, and the dormitories added, about the year 
1840, when the Rev. J. H. C. Borwell (then head master of the 
Endowed Grammar School, Plymouth) was appointed to succeed 
the late head master, the Rev. Robert Lane, perpetual curate of 
Salcombe Chapel. 

I cannot do better than extract from Hawkins' " Kingsbridge 
and Salcombe " (a work which I trust Mr. Friend may one day 
find it worth his while to re-print, as I very much want a copy of 
the same, and am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. John Hooper, 
junior, of Kingsbridge, for the use of that which now lies before 
me) the passages bearing reference to the bequests of Thomas 
Crispin, the founder of the school, and of William "Duncombe, 
who held the position of first head master of the same, under 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 123 

direct appointment from the founder himself; adding a short 
account of the changes made in the constitution of the school and 
modifications of founder's and benefactor's wills, by decree of the 
High Court of Chancery, in 1846, into which the affairs pertain- 
ing to the school, lectureship, &c, had been thrown in order to 
bring about a satisfactory settlement of a quarrel that had arisen 
between the town and trustees of the charities touching the 
administration of the funds, and, I rather think, to promote an 
attempt on the part of the inhabitants to infuse some new blood 
into the directory. 

Mr. Hawkins tells us that, "in 1688-9, Mr. Crispin, by his 
will, bequeathed this grammar school and house, with the appur- 
tenances thereunto belonging, to seven 1 trustees. He directed 
that, when these should be reduced by death to three, the sur- 
vivors should fill up the number, and this be done successively 
for ever. Therein he charged an estate of his in fee, called 
Washbearhays, lying in the parish of Bradninch, in the county 
of Devon, with the payment of an annuity of thirty pounds to 
the said trustees, for them to give five pounds thereof yearly for 
teaching twenty-five poor children of the town of Kingsbridge 
English, five pounds more for instructing twelve poor children to 
write and cipher, five pounds a-year for repairing the grammar 
school, and to defray the expense of collecting the money, which 
sum is left to the discretion of the trustees, and fifteen pounds 
per annum for ever to be paid to the master of the said school 
(such a one as shall be chosen and appointed by the trustees), 
who is to teach at least fifteen boys of the said town (grammar) ; 
and in case so many are not to be found in that place, then the 
number may be filled up at the discretion of the trust. 

" He also bequeathed to the said trustees the sum of twenty- 
five pounds, either to be laid out in land or placed at interest, as 
they should think fit, and the profits to be expended in buying 
books and paper for the children of the school ; but this sum is 
said never to have been received. 



124 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

"'Mr. William Duncombe, who was the first master of this 
school, still contributed a more noble charity to the town of 
Kingsbridge ; for, in 1691, he by will bequeathed certain lands 
unto seven trustees (and as often as any of these refused to act or 
died, the major part of those present at the next meeting were 
directed by the said testament to fill up the vacancy, and proceed 
in like manner for ever), in order to pay fifty pounds a-year to a 
lecturer, to be chosen by the major part of the said trustees, with 
the consent of the inhabitants of the town, who shall every Sunday 
supply the place of the vicar on that part of the day when his 
duty requires his attention at Churchstow, and also preach once a 
month on one of the week-days which he shall judge most conve- 
nient ; that the lecturer so chosen shall be neither the master of 
the free school, the usher, nor the incumbent or pastor of the 
place, but some other clergyman of good moral character. 

"Besides the annual stipend of fifty pounds, he ordered that 
the lecturer should be paid an additional three pounds yearly to 
give away, or buy books to present to the poor parishioners as an 
encouragement to learn catechisms, &c. He also directed that 
ten pounds a-year (if the estate would permit) should be allowed 
for four years to one, two, or three scholars, being poor and edu- 
cated at the free school before mentioned, who should go from 
thence to Oxford or Cambridge, with the approbation of the 
major part of the trustees and the master, as a help towards their 
maintenance in the university. If any surplus remained, he or- 
dered that it should be applied, at the discretion of the majority 
of the trustees, in binding out poor scholars, of not less than two 
years' standing at the said free school, to good trades ; but that 
no larger sum than eight pounds should be given with each, and 
a like sum at the expiration of their apprenticeship (provided they 
behaved well) to set them up in business. 

" Agreeably to the directions of the testator, the trustees con- 
tinue to assemble annually on Midsummer Day to settle their 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 125 

accounts, &c, twenty shillings being then allowed them for a 
treat." The trustees "are men of respectability, and such have 
always been their predecessors, to whose independent and upright 
conduct may be attributed the present flourishing state of the 
charity, the annual income of which amounts to four hundred and 
twenty-five pounds from houses and lands, with the addition of 
between seventy and eighty pounds in dividends from funded 
property, making together about five hundred pounds a-year." 

The above account was written about the year 1819. 1 believe 
the Chancery suit arising out of the scrimmage between the 
townsmen and the trustees sliced goodly parings for a while from 
the annual income of the charities ; but; under the charge of the 
gentlemen who are at present trustees, ind the fostering care of 
the trustees' clerk, Mr. Thomas Harris, there can be no doubt 
that the tree of good works planted by Crispin and watered by 
Duncombe will ere long flourish more vigorously than ever. 

The Chancery suit (The Attorney-General v. Newman and 
others) commenced in 1843; the inhabitants asserting that the 
charities had been mismanaged by the trustees, and that they 
had an undoubted right, under Buncombe' s will, to ratify, or 
dissent from, the choice of the trustees with regard to a clergy- 
man to fill the post of lecturer. The solicitors on the part of the 
town were Messrs. Hurrell and Lidstone; Mr. Thomas Harris 
clerk to the trustees, acting on their behalf. The business lan- 
guished and lingered until 1846, when Lord Langdale, Master of 
the Rolls, pronounced his fiat on the case. The following is a 
brief abstract of the decree : — Each charity was to be adminis- 
tered by seven trustees, as heretofore ; the whole body of trustees, 
fourteen in number, being considered, for the future, governors 
of the school. A reserve fund was ordered to be made for each 
charity, to the amount of seventy pounds for Duncombe's charity 
and ten pounds for Crispin's charity, and to be kept in hand to 
meet incidental expenses necessary to the respective estates. The 



126 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

lecturer was to be paid one hundred and twenty pounds per 
annum in lieu of his former salary of fifty pounds, and he was 
ordered to provide himself with a house at his own expense. The 
writing and reading schools mentioned previously in Mr. Hawkins' 
abstract of the wills of the founders were left to the mercy of the 
governors ; and both, I believe, have been discontinued for some 
years. All monies from both charities, after providing for the need- 
ful repairs, reserve fund, and lecturer's salary, were to be handed 
over to a fund called the u school fund " ; out of which were to be 
paid the repairs and rents of school-house, the salaries of the clerk, 
master, and examiner, as well as of the master and mistress of the 
writing and reading school, the exhibitions and apprentice fees, 
and all those necessary and unavoidable items of expenditure that 
lie lumped together under that useful and significant term, " sun- 
dries." Any surplus remaining after satisfying the claims above 
enumerated was to be invested in the Three per cent. Consols, 
and added to the stock already standing in the names of the 
trustees. The clerk was to be paid twelve pounds per annum; 
the master (who must be a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge and 
a member of the Church of England) fifty pounds per annum, with 
house and gardens rent free, but subject to parochial rates and 
taxes, with permission to increase his income by taking thirty-six 
boarders. The master has to appoint an under master (who must 
also be a graduate of either of the universities), and to this privi- 
lege he has the gracious permission of Lord Langdale to add the 
pleasure of paying him. The Bishop of Exeter is styled the 
visitor of the school; and in this capacity he appoints an exa- 
miner, who holds a public examination of the school at Midsummer, 
and reports in writing to the visitor and governors as to the state 
of the same, and the progress and improvement of the pupils. 
The Examiner is paid fifteen pounds for his services on each 
occasion. The master is required to educate twenty boys free of 
expense, such boys to be natives of Kingsbridge, or sons of 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 127 

parents resident in Kingsbridge at the time of their admission ; 
but failing a sufficient number from the town, the governors may- 
elect free boys from any parish or place within one mile from the 
school-house. All day scholars not on the foundation pay one 
guinea to the master as an entrance fee, and the same amount per 
quarter. There are four exhibitions of fifty pounds each, tenable 
for four years, to be given to boys educated at the Grammar 
School proceeding to either of the universities : all boys are 
eligible, but, ceteris paribus, preference is given to Kingsbridge 
boys. Apprentice fees to the amount of twenty pounds each are 
to be paid annually for the benefit of four boys, being Kingsbridge 
free boys, educated at the school. The^overnors have the power 
of reducing the number of exhibitions and apprentice fees, should 
the funds be insufficient to enable them to go to the extent indi- 
cated and prescribed by the decree. 

Lord Langdale concludes his judgment by confirming the right 
of the town to have a word to say with regard to the choice of a 
lecturer, according to the decision of Lord King in 1728. The 
town threw down the gauntlet to the trustees in 1855, respect- 
ing the nomination of the present lecturer, the Rev. W. Sloane 
Sloane-Evans. It was determined to ascertain the wishes of the 
inhabitants by appointing a day when each rate-payer might 
record his Placet or Non Placet with regard to the nomination 
made by the trustees : their appointment was, however, confirmed 
by the result of the day's proceedings, and Mr. Sloane-Evans 
immediately after entered into the full enjoyment of all the 
privileges and emoluments of the office. 

I said that the school-room built on the model of that at Eton 
was up stairs; below the school is the dining-room, which was 
well filled with a goodly company of the rising generation in Mr. 
BorwelFs days, and will be filled again, I sincerely hope, with as 
numerous a gathering as soon as Kingsbridge shall be looped and 
tacked to the world once more, by means of a spur of the South 



128 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

Devon Kail way dove-tailing into that great highway of iron some- 
where between Kingsbridge Road Station and South Brent. It 
was a goodly dining-room in those days, and seven good dinners 
per week were regularly eaten therein; then it was reserved strictly 
for the business of the satte a manger, but since I have seen boys 
playing peg-in-the-ring there, ploughing up the well-knit red 
deal floor with steel-pointed peg tops, in a way calculated to have 
made the shades of Crispin and Duncombe shiver in their ghostly 
shoes could they have been permitted to drop in en passant at that 
identical moment. And oh ! horresco ref evens ! why were the 
windows whitened from sill to architrave, from side to side, under 
the regime of the Rev. James Whiteside ? What demoiselle's 
ardent glances in that direction, prompted only, I am positively 
confident, by an absorbing desire to take lessons in Propria qua 
maribus, drove successive batches of Grammar School boys, to the 
horror and disgust of their respected preceptors, to study Ovid's 
Ars Amandi in earnest, and to fling in return warm looks of 
reciprocity, whole fagots of boy's love, through the transparent 
though well-scratched medium to the fond but fickle fair, till on 
one black Monday morning the panes through which the arrowy 
glances hurtled were darkened with a coat of envious paint ? Oh 
fie, Mr. W. to stop such pretty and innocent mi-aw-ling, and thus 
to tell the world that though a cat may look at a king, even that 
earthly monarch of monarchs (excepting always our own thrice 
royal Queen) Yictor Emmanuel, sovereign of Italy, it is not 
seemly for a young lady to gaze too seductively at young gentle- 
men when they ought to be studiously inclined, and tramp in 
frequent passage up and down the well-known pave, until 

The young St. Anthonies boggled their eyes 

Over each dull dry book ; 
Ho ! Ho ! at the corners they 'gan to rise ; 
The lady to them had a lovely guise, 

And they could not care but look. 

But we must run up stairs again, and have one more look at 



MYRTLE3 AND ALOES. 129 

the old school-room, and one or two more stories about it before 
we get further down the street. Aye, old room, 1 have spent 
many a happy hour within your wainscoted walls, and I trust if 
any old schoolfellow ever reads these pages, he will remember me 
with the same kindly genial feeling of good fellowship with which 
I now remember him. Let me also gladly seize this opportunity to 
bear public testimony to the unvarying kindness, care, and atten- 
tion that I always received in that room and out of that room 
from Mr. Borwell, to whom I owe all I know, with an earnest 
hope that when I am old and well stricken in years, if God permit 
me to become so, many an old pupil of mine will appreciate all I 
have tried to do for them as truly and^sincerely as I now value, 
with my warmest thanks for the same, everything that Mr. Bor- 
well did for me. 

No one at present resident in Kingsbridge, or, at all events, 
but very few, can remember the Rev. John Wilcocks, who held 
the mastership from 1799 till 1809. In times gone by, there 
was a famous mutton pie house over the way, kept by a baker 
named Gilbert : the house still stands conspicuous with a slated 
front a little below Yine House ; but alas ! Gilbert exists no 
longer, and his mutton pies, of which I have heard old gentlemen 
speak with an unctuous ripple playing round the corners of their 
mouths, have perished with him. To this baker the boys would 
resort at all seasons, and endeavour to assuage the bitterness of 
learning, and get rid of the unpalatable taste of the fruit of the 
tree of knowledge, by solacing themselves with the crisp crust and 
juicy mutton that lay in judiciously-managed embrace in his enticing 
window. One day, a very stout doctor, who attended the school 
as a very stout boy under the dispensation of the Rev. John Wil- 
cocks, after fighting the good fight against carnal desires for many 
minutes, quitted the school-room, and crossing the street, quickly 
became the possessor of a bright brown pie, hot from the fiery 
ordeal of the oven. In those days it was the custom and rigid rule 

s 



130 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

for boys to bow to the master on entering and quitting the room : 
the miserable urchin, little anticipating what was to come, returned 
and duly performed the obsequious koo-too. He had, regardless of 
shirt front, deposited the spoil of the bakehouse, for better security, 
in his bosom, that beat high with hope of approaching greasy en- 
joyment. But his waistcoat betrayed him. While bending before 
the awful majesty of the head master, the pie fell on the floor 
upon its edge, and (a fact which speaks volumes for Gilbert's 
pastry) rolled up the school-room, and settled uninjured in a 
state of rest. The outraged master and pie-less boy were equally 
astonished and equally disgusted with the untoward event, though 
for widely different reasons. The delinquent was incontinently 
hoisted and severely birched, learning by painful experience the 
glaring truth of the old adage, " There's many a slip 'twixt the 
cup and the lip." I wonder, however, what became of the pie, 
and who finally feasted on its savoury contents. It is a mystery ; 
and I fear me that, like the Eoad Murder and Waterloo Bridge 
Tragedy, it will ever remain so. 

From time immemorial it has been the custom, better honoured 
in its breach than its observance, for boys to try the strength and 
quality of their pocket knives on the desks, seats, and other fit- 
tings of their respective schools, by graving and hacking their 
names and initials upon them in anything but a pleasing and 
regular form of letter. I hope the wainscoting of the old school 
will be allowed to remain where it is, although so wofully dis- 
figured and scored with trenched gashes, and not be ruthlessly 
pulled down and chopped up for firewood, like the wooden lining 
of a certain Oxfordshire grammar school I wot of, the panels of 
which bore the names of Anthony a Wood, a gentleman, scholar, 
and antiquary of note; and of John Wilkes, low demagogue 
scoundrel ; with many others — that of noble John Hampden, 
hero and patriot, being, as I have been told, among them. I 
would fain propose to the fourteen governors, in solemn conclave 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 13X 

assembled, to restore and colour the highest row of panels, to 
receive the names of those who have been educated at the school, 
and have since distinguished themselves in literature, science, art, 
or learning (hoping that mine may be there ere I die), and sug- 
gest that there appear, conspicuously emblazoned among the 
worthy series of those who already deserve the honour, those of 
the Rev. John Earle, late professor of Anglo-Saxon at the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, and Dr. John Wolcot, better known as Peter 
Pindar. 

Peter was bora in " a smart little mansion with a white front/' 
which stood on a spot on Dodbrooke Quay some sixty yards or 
more from the water's edge, where Pindar Lodge (in the occu- 
pation of Mr. William Bond, coal merchant, &c.) now stands. 
This house was built by the Rev. Nathaniel Wells, in 1795, on 
the site of the house which had been for many generations the 
home of the Wolcot family. Young Wolcot, while a school-boy, 
one of the sauciest, I expect, of the saucy young rascals who were 
then running wild in the gutters of Kingsbridge, managed one 
day to throw the whole town into consternation by the report 
that he had committed a foul and bloody murder on the person 
of a cobbler, whose name tradition has failed to hand down to 
posterity. This botcher of boots, diverting his attention for a 
while from his leather and cucumbers (he must have had cucum- 
bers on the ledge in front of his shop window, for I never yet 
knew a disciple of Hoby in Kingsbridge who did not earnestly 
devote himself to the growth and sale of this grateful though 
indigestible fruit, as well as to the supply of understandings for 
his neighbours) would, whenever Peter passed his stall, scream 
with derisive jeer and taunt, " Jacky, you've been whipped to- 
day," making the word " whipped," jerked out with rasping 
asperity of enunciation, chime in with the whiz of the waxed end 
through the awl-pierced sole and upper. Now this insulting and 
aggravating accusation was hurled at Peter whenever, and as soon 



132 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 



as ever, the cobbler set eyes on him, and was uttered again and 
again with every stitch until he had disappeared. How he must 
have hated that Nemesis of a cobbler ! How he must have de- 
sired with yearning longing to choke him with his own cucum- 
bers ! At last he resolved on a dire revenge ; and one day, while 
the cobbler was in fall cry, he drew a heavy horse pistol from his 
pocket, and discharged the contents in his persecutor's face. The 
rattle of the report and the yells of the victim, whose features 
were indistinguishable and dripping with gore, soon brought old 
women to the doors and young women to the windows; while 
the cobbler's son, collaring the murderous Jack, and freely and 
voluntarily offering to be immediately " darned if Maister Wolcot 
hadn't a scat vather's brains clean over the shop," bawled lustily 
for the constable. There was a terrible racing and chasing in all 
directions, pretty nearly as bad as that on Cannobie Lea : every- 
body, according to Cocker in these cases, got in everybody else's 
way : exasperated crones vaunted their skill in prophecy, and 
claimed to rank among the seers, by asserting that they " allays 
had said as how the young blackkurt would come to the gallies:" 
doctors came flocking together from the four winds of heaven : 
an anxious inquiry into the injuries received by the unhappy man 
commenced, when it was revealed, through the agency of a sponge 
and cold water, that the old ladies were not yet qualified to stand 
among the prophets — that the adventurous son had too rashly 
and hastily laid himself open to the operation of " darning," 
whatever that may be — and that Peter had committed no murder, 
but, by cramming his weapon with bullock's blood instead of ball 
cartridge, had managed most effectually to turn the town upside 
down for a season, and to turn the tables on the malignant cob- 
bler, who ever after allowed him to pass and re-pass in sullen 
silence. 

The space within which Mr. Friend compels me to confine my 
subject warns me that I must say no more about the school, or 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 183 

anything connected with it, however remotely : I will merely ask 
my old confreres if they remember the awful morning when the 
curtain rose on a scene of flagellation, and two little sinners, one at 
present a pillar of the church and rector of a parish on the south 
coast of Devon, the other the son of a rector in the same locality, 
now a prosperous wine merchant in some suburb of London, were 
hoisted on the stalwart back of a boy, now making chips in 
Australia to some purpose, and well tickled with a twiggy birch 
for dallying with lucifer matches in bed, when they ought to have 
been snoring betwixt their sheets and blankets. Do they remem- 
ber, I wonder, the wild and eccentric pas de quatre danced one 
portentous day up and down the floor of the school, the pets of 
the ballet on that occasion and performers therein being our 
reverend preceptor, an unruly and turbulent pupil, a stern sea 
captain, unyielding parent of the same, and a disciple of Escula- 
pius, son-in-law of the third-named member of our dramatis 
persona. Many must recollect the gyratic performance of that 
morning, the waltzing whirl of the triad of kith and kin in a 
Laocoon-like group, collaring each other with well clenched digits, 
their respective shins being in liberal receipt of monkeys' allowance, 
and how reverend preceptor, brandishing the captain's own stick, 
a well ferruled bamboo, hovered in front and in rear, and on either 
flank of the knot of enraged relatives, who freely expressed their 
opinion of each other in terms of opprobrium, larded and garnished 
with condemnatory adjectives and verbs of the same nature roundly 
delivered in the imperative mood in repeated and rattling broad- 
sides, and soundly thrashed all three, father, son, and son-in-law, 
in his well-meant endeavours to belabour the offender who warded 
the blows by the dexterous interposition of his smarting and writh- 
ing kindred. We, who looked on with distended eyes, added many 
new words to our vocabulary that day in the tongue vulgar, and 
enjoyed the stormy scene with mingled gusto and intense delight, 
dashed perhaps with a little fright and wonder. Two of the four 



134 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

lie low in earth's embrace, and the ashes of the poor son, shot 
down and wounded to death as a volunteer in an expedition to 
uphold the might and honour of England against a cruel and half 
savage people, mingle with the sun-scorched dust of an eastern land. 

At last I get out of school once more, and turning to my right 
out of the big double doors, I go on my way rejoicing down the 
street. Opposite Duncombe Street I find a trimly kept green 
sward within iron railings and gates, divided by a straight broad 
path leading directly to a door, over which is written "Ebenezer." 
It is the entrance to the chapel of the Wesleyan Methodists, built 
by subscriptions of members of that body in the year 1814, a new 
pediment having been erected and the front altered and stuccoed 
in the year 1850. The building, which is of stone, is forty feet 
long, thirty broad, and twenty-one in height. 

Our old friend Justice Hawkins remarks that " a variety of 
religious opinions has long pervaded the town of Kingsbridge; 
and though the number of inhabitants, including all ages, as has 
already been seen, fell short of a thousand in 1791, and, even in 
1811, was under thirteen hundred, yet here there were no less 
than three dissenting meeting-houses at the former period, all 
which had their foundations laid in the eighteenth century, and a 
fourth has been recently erected ; while the number of religions 
in the place has been quaintly reckoned to amount to, sixteen." 
Was it Yoltaire who said that England was a nation with twenty 
religions and one sauce, or some other equally profligate and 
godless unit of the nation of men that Voltaire himself character- 
ised as half tiger, half monkey in disposition, who preserve the 
same ferocious and mischievous traits to the present day, except- 
ing always their clever and saturnine ruler, the Emperor, who 
differs from his people in part, in that he is half tiger, half 
sphinx? But whether Yoltaire or some jibing compatriot said 
this, had either visited Kingsbridge, he would have averred that 
that corner of the tight little island was in no way behind the 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 135 

rest of the land in religious ardour and exquisite differences of 
opinion in matters doctrinal and ceremonial. Ah ! there are many 
ways of getting to the same place ; and though there were sixteen 
ways in Kingsbridge in 1811, when there were thirteen hundred 
inhabitants, and many more now, necessarily, if creeds and com- 
munities increase in a like ratio, yet, doubtless, all these lead 
onward to the same great end and object — yes ! iuto the strait 
and narrow road at last, the common way for all. It is a grievous 
thing to view our neighbour coldly and with scorn, sitting in 
pharisaical judgment upon him in direct opposition to the Divine 
command, because he happens to differ^ from us in minor points 
of faith and ceremonies and liturgies, ^beautiful with excess of 
beauty though they be, yet after all the work of sinful men, al- 
though the chief corner stone of our buildings must be the same, 
although Christ be all in all to him as well as to us. But about 
the sauces ! England has certainly come out in that especial line 
since the above-named reproach was levelled at her by the French- 
man. I will not stay now to revel in descriptive delight in cata- 
loguing the long list that have made Lea and Perrin, Crosse and 
Blackwell, Elizabeth Lazenby, Orton, &c. &c, famous throughout 
the wide world, but dash my pen more deeply into my ink-pot 
that I may declare in all the significance of capitals that Kings- 
bridge boasts two sauces ; for my palate yet gratefully remembers 
the aroma of that delightful condiment skilfully prepared by Mr. 
W. H. Balk will for fish, flesh, fowl, and game, called " The 
Kingsbridge Relish " ; and the flavour and gout of the exquisite 
concoction from the laboratory of my gallant friend the Sergeant- 
Major of the 26th D. E. Y., Mr. W. H. Troake, for which, 
whenever he may require it, I shall be happy to incubate a name 
which shall at least equal in unintelligibility the Anhydrohepse- 
terion, the florid name of a modern machine for cooking potatoes, 
or the Tetaragmenon Abracadabra of Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse's 
artist in hair, which effected such chameleon-like wonders on the 
head of that unhappy little specimen of the genus " gent." 



136 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

Passing the Devon and, Cornwall Bank on the left side of the 
street, under the management of Mr. George Fox, and a large 
block of buildings on the other side of the way, rather lower 
down, occupied by Mr. Bignell, confectioner, formerly known as 
the "wooden house," on the top of which the builder and original 
owner actually instituted a garden and turned a donkey out to 
grass — the only points particularly requiring notice — we come to 
the parish church, hidden from the street by a row of butchers' 
stalls under a colonnade supported by dwarfed granite pillars, 
over which is a long narrow room, formerly the butter market, 
part of which is now used as an auction mart by Mr. W. Park- 
house, and the remainder as an armoury by the members of the 
26th D. E. Y. These stalls and the room above are the property 
of John Scobell, Esquire, the lord of the manor, who has lately 
consented to the removal of the room, at the expense, however, 
of the inhabitants. Funds will doubtless be found in some way 
or another for the destruction of the unsightly old market-house, 
as its demolition and the substitution of a handsome iron railing 
in front of the church would render that building an ornament 
and striking feature of the town. 

The church, which, with the burial ground, occupies nearly 
an acre of ground, was built in the early part of the fifteenth 
century by the abbot and monks of Buckfastleigh, by permission 
of M. de Littlecumb, then rector of Churchstow, granted on 
certain conditions ; and on August 26th, 1414, was dedicated 
to St. Edmund, king and martyr. The building is cruciform, 
and four massive pillars and arches springing from the same in 
the centre of the cross support a square tower sixty feet in height, 
crowned with battlements, and an octagonal spire forty feet high, 
surmounted by a weathercock. The tower contains a clock and 
six good bells, cast in London in the year 1762. The old bells 
were on their way to the metropolis to be re-cast, when they were 
captured and carried off by a French privateer. The old clock, 
as well as the present one, put up in the year 1786, was notorious 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 137 

for its inveterate propensity to indicate anything but the right 
time, so that men at last reproached their friends and neighbours 
who were wont to indulge in lies white and black, and of every 
shade and tone of hue between, by saying, "You're as great a 
liar as Kingsbridge clock/' A curiously carved cross originally 
stood at the east end, which was displaced in 1818 to make room 
for an ugly square clock turret, with three dials communicating 
with the works in the tower at a distance of twenty-four feet. 
This dial box has, if I rightly remember, long since gone the way 
of all mundane things, and so has the old cross bearing in relief 
the emblems of our Saviour's passion an& sufferings : it has been 
entirely lost sight of, and has possibly, and very probably, too, 
been broken up to mend the roads. It is a pity that there is no 
clock face to be seen from the street ; but the worthy people of 
Kingsbridge are capital hands at bazaars, and while the present 
restorations are being effected something might be done to orna- 
ment the old square tower with four good dial plates, to be 
conspicuous from the street at all points, the estuary, the Union, 
and the surrounding hills. 

The church is about ninety feet in length from east to west, 
including the portion recently added at the west end ; the arms 
of the cross, including the central area under the tower, are about 
seventy-six feet long; the width of the nave, divided into three 
aisles, is forty-six feet, and that of the north and south transepts 
about fourteen feet. The building was re-seated and partially 
restored in 1849 : further renovations have just been made, 
including a new roof, new windows at the east and west ends 
(that over the communion table being the joint gift of John 
Miller, Esquire, and Mrs. Toby), besides two or three at the 
sides, and the removal of the western gallery, which was occupied 
by the organ and choir, and the erection of new freestone crosses 
over the several gables. A painting of the Last Supper, which 
used to occupy a place over the communion table, has dis- 

T 



138 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

appeared. There are a few handsome monuments and tablets on 
the walls, and lettered slabs of slate and marble, forming parts of 
the chancel, nave, and transepts, marking the memories and last 
resting places of many former inhabitants of the town and neigh- 
bourhood, among whom may be mentioned William Duncombe, 
the founder of the lectureship. Particular mention should be 
made of the monument to the memory of Mrs. Hawkins, wife of 
Major Hawkins, of the East India Company's service, in the north 
transept, beautifully executed in Carrara marble by Flaxman. 

The old carved rood-loft was removed in the early part of the 
present century by some furiously anti-papal churchwarden, I 
presume, who loved whitewash and the hideous glazing that 
disfigures many of our beautiful parish churches, and all the 
abominations in church building, altering, and adorning, fami- 
liarly known as church wardens' architecture ; and hated carving, 
and coloured glass, and polychrome decorations, as savouring of 
Eome and the Eomish ritual. One little remnant was to be seen 
in the pew of Mr. Jacob Davie, prior to the re- seating of the 
church in 1849 : it was a coarse wooden carving of the figure of 
a man holding a shield before him, bearing a crown : the image 
was adorned with wings, and was supposed to represent the 
patron saint of the church, St. Edmund, king and martyr. 

Immediately adjoining the church on the south side are the 
Public Eooms, or Town Hall. This building was erected by a 
company of shareholders formed for the purpose in 1850; some 
miserable old dwelling-houses which previously occupied the site 
having been pulled down to make room for their more pretentious 
successor. The front elevation facing the street is built in accord- 
ance with the general principles of the Italian style of architecture. 
Ascending some granite steps, and passing through the large 
central folding door, flanked by two side entrances, we come at 
once into a spacious area paved with stone, which is used for the 
weekly poultry and butter market, as well as a covered drill room 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 139 

during the winter months for the 26th D. E. V. A long passage 
at the further end leads to a lock-up for malefactors of a minor 
class that turn up now and then even in Kingsbridge, apartments 
for the sergeant of police resident in the district, and offices for 
the clerk and other officials of the County Court. A flight of 
stone stairs at the west end leads to the Town Hall, a handsome 
well-built room, admirably fitted up, used for magistrates' meet- 
ings, sittings of the County Court, lectures, concerts, bazaars, and 
even Sunday services when necessary repairs and alterations 
compel the members of any church or chapel in the town to use 
it for a time as a place of worship. A ^commodious withdrawing 
room is attached. Another staircase to the left takes us to the 
reading room, with a window commanding the street, amply 
supplied with books, papers, maps, and other requisites, a library, 
a room for committee meetings, &c, and another ultimately in- 
tended for a museum for the reception of curiosities of all kinds 
from all climes, specimens of natural history, paintings, &c. &c; 
and I daresay that I may venture to add that the authorities who 
exercise a watchful guardianship over the Town Hall and all 
belonging and appertaining to it will gladly receive anything 
worth having from generously minded individuals, to form a 
nucleus for future extension, the donor's name being in all cases 
conspicuously attached to each gift to serve as a hint to visitors 
to immortalize themselves forthwith. 

Quitting the Town Hall, the next building that deserves notice 
is the Independent Chapel on the eastern side of the street. This 
chapel was originally built by members of a Presbyterian congre- 
gation in lieu of a meeting-house on the other side of the street, 
behind the house of Mr. John Lamble, nearly opposite the Devon 
and Cornwall Bank, as closely as I can determine the site, in the 
year 1790. In the following year it seems that a " change took 
place in the tenets of the society ; for, in the trust deed executed 
since the year 1791, the congregation which assembles in this 



140 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

meeting-house is described as of the Independent persuasion." 
After various enlargements and alterations this building was 
pulled down, and the present edifice, a chapel with commodious 
school-rooms underneath, erected in the early English style from 
the tasteful design and under the skilful superintendence of Mr. 
J. Pulliblank, architect and builder, who will pardon me for saying 
that he is one of the most useful men that Kingsbridge possesses, 
ever ready to wield pen or pencil in a good cause, and able to do 
good service with both. 

Ah ! I see in my mind's eye a narrow passage and a crowd of 
boys pouring gladly through it into the open street. School is 
over, and Mr. Campion has dismissed his flock to follow their 
own devices for a season. Mr. Blackler is no longer goaded 
to wrath by the unseemly shrieking and tumult with which 
the urchins hailed their liberty in Mr. Sinnett's time, when the 
fetters of discipline were shelved for a season, for order now reigns 
supreme. Let us go down and look at the room — lofty, airy, built 
of dressed stone on well turned arches. This is St. Edmund's 
School, established by the Eev. John Tucker in 1844, or there- 
abouts, under the expansive title of the " Kingsbridge Classical, 
Mathematical, and Commercial School": its present name, in 
honour of the patron saint of the church, was substituted for the 
original lengthy appellation by me, in 1853, when I wore the 
mantle of master and proprietor of the same; considerable won- 
der and speculation arising as to the why and wherefore of the 
change. St. Edmund's School has absorbed that formerly con- 
ducted by Mr. Gibbs, as well as Mr. Parker's school, which was 
held in this very room for a long series of years, and finally 
passed into the hands of Mr. Thomas, who relinquished it when 
Mr. Sinnett became my successor in 1859, and removed the 
school from Athenseum Place, Dodbrooke, to its present location. 

The Friends' meeting-house, an unpretending building about 
thirty feet square and eighteen feet in height, with a neatly kept 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 141 

garden in front, was built by subscription in the year 1701-2. 
Quarterly meetings are held here by the Eriends of the western 
division : indeed, Kingsbridge seems to be the only town of its 
size and importance in the West of England in which a meeting- 
house for the society is to be found. The enclosure on the north 
side of Duncombe Street, immediately behind the old engine 
house, opposite the Wesleyan Chapel, was formerly a burying 
ground for Quakers : it has not, however, been used for the 
purpose of interment for about a century and a half; and as the 
land is now used as a drying ground and garden, this necessary- 
piece of information may, perhaps, quiet the qualms of body and 
mind likely to arise in any who find that they have been gathering 
vegetables from such a questionable spot, and may, with lively 
imagination, picture to themselves that they have been indeed 
eating a friend ; every cabbage they have shared, every pea that 
they have swallowed, being part and parcel of somebody who 
was formerly a Quaker in the flesh, transmuted by the alchemy 
of nature into a brassic or leguminous form. " The register of 
this society commences in the year 1659, which shows that they 
have been established in Kingsbridge from the days of George 
Pox, their founder, who first began to preach in 1647 and died 
in 1690." 

Nearly opposite the Friends' meeting-house, and below the 
premises of Mr. Henry Nicholls, jnn., naturalist, &c, stands a 
place of worship for the Plymouth Brethren. It was built in 
1853, and has a neat stone front, with a colonnade before the 
principal entrance : it was designed by the architect of the Inde- 
pendent Chapel before named. The chapel stands back from the 
street, from which it is separated by a grass lawn and handsome 
iron railing. There remains one chapel more to be mentioned 
(though there may be rooms and out-of-the-way corners appro- 
priated to the use of members of various erratic persuasions of 
minor rank and minimum importance in the scale ecclesiastical), 



142 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

the Baptist Chapel in Meeting Lane, which connects the main 
street with the western backway, passing Phoenix Place, &c. The 
present building was erected in the year 1799, by the exertions of 
the Rev. H. Penn, for nineteen years Baptist minister in Kings- 
bridge, in lieu of the former chapel now converted into a cellar 
and tenement, which stands some feet higher up, nearer Fore 
Street. It was enlarged and altered in style, and a new roof 
placed over it, in 1852, and is now one of the neatest and most 
commodious chapels in the town. The garden adjoining has been 
used as a burial ground for many years ; but the Baptists possess 
another at Yenn, in the parish of Churchstow, which is very 
seldom used. 

The business of the Kingsbridge Joint Stock Bank, established 
1842, is carried on at the offices of Messrs. Hurrell and Lidstone, 
solicitors, at the residence of the senior partner of the firm and 
manager of the bank. 

The Union house for Kingsbridge and twenty-six neighbouring 
parishes is built on a slope opposite Norden and Bowringsleigh 
woods, both belonging to W. R. Ilbert, Esquire, of Horswell 
House. Access to it is obtained by a road branching from Mill 
Street on the northern side, nearly opposite the entrance to Quay 
House, passing a pretty villa residence known as the Retreat, 
built by the late Mr. John Dinnis, of Kingsbridge. 

In Dodbrooke, the only building demanding notice is the 
church, situated in one of the prettiest and most retired church- 
yards in the county of Devon. Some may think that too fervent 
a tribute of praise is given to this spot and the sacred building it 
encompasses ; but I have many a cogent reason for fostering more 
than a common liking and love for this in particular of all God's 
holy English shrines, as the three parish registers may well testify > 
and among my remembrances there stands forth in bold relief 
and vivid colouring the solemn, earnest, gentle, and affectionate 
ministry of one whom to hear is to like, respect, and love ; who 



MYRTLES A^D ALOES. 143 

will be spared for many a long year to come, I trust, to his con- 
gregation, of which I was once a member, all of whom will, I am 
sure, without a single exception, but in warmer terms, confirm 
the little I have dared to say of him. 

The church was re-seated, and the interior otherwise restored, 
in 1846, low pews being substituted for the sleep-encouraging 
loose boxes that formerly encumbered the aisles. The gallery on 
the south side was then taken down, those at the west end being 
permitted to remain for the accommodation of the choir and 
Sunday school children. An harmonium, played by a very near 
and dear relative of mine, and an abl# coadjutor, for some years 
(whose joint services were kindly and gracefully acknowledged by 
the congregation by the presentation of a handsome testimonial 
to each lady) was subsequently substituted for the fiddles, flutes, 
and bassoons that had long accompanied psalm and anthem in 
the music loft with due orchestral furore, with all the trillings, 
roulades, and vain repetitions peculiar to country psalmody, or 
the tunes affected by country psalmists, from which may I ever 
be delivered. The church itself seems to have lost the north aisle. 
The nave is sixty feet long and nineteen broad, separated from 
the chancel by a handsome old screen, now, in very questionable 
taste, surmounted with frowning battlements. The south aisle, 
fifty feet long by sixteen broad, is also separated from another 
small aisle at its eastern end by a continuation of the screen: 
this aisle belongs to John Gillard, Esquire, of Well, who is 
obliged to keep the same in thorough repair. There are one or 
two monuments on the walls, and incised slabs let into the pave- 
ment of the church : that on the south wall is to the memory of 
Elizabeth, wife of Johu Beare, of Bearescombe, an estate in the 
parish of Buckland-tout-saints, formerly called Woodmason. 
This John Beare was a famous, or rather infamous, persecutor 
of Nonconformists in the reign of Charles II. His deeds in this 
line in Kingsbridge are chronicled in a pamphlet revised from an 



144 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

old work published in 1671, entitled, "A Narrative of the Per- 
secutions against Dissenters in Kingsbridge and other places in 
Devonshire, under the reign of Charles II." I believe copies of 
this are very scarce, but the pamphlet is well worth re-printing. 
The exterior of the south aisle and south porch is of hewn stone, 
ornamented with battlements on the top of the walls. There was 
a window of granite and coloured glass at the east end, which 
was taken out during the reign of a former rector more famous 
for whiskers than wisdom, who read prayers and preached at rail- 
road pace, and was wont to boast that he would give any parson 
living — archbishops, bishops, deans, and deacons all included — as 
far as the end of the Belief, and beat them hollow. A window 
in the worst style of churchwardens' architecture was substituted, 
wood for granite, plain panes for glass of richly varied tints, 
which it is to be hoped that the good taste and better judgment 
of the parishioners will cause to be removed to make room for 
something better. The tower possesses five bells, and was for- 
merly surmounted by a steeple, which was taken down in 
1785. Would that the steeple, north aisle, and east window 
could be speedily restored. There are many handsome monu- 
ments and railed graves in the churchyard; but that which will 
cause the saddest reflection and call forth the warmest sympathy 
is one on the north side, to the memory of a little girl called 
Huxtable, who, in former days, when there were barracks in 
Kingsbridge and soldiers in them, was decoyed from her home 
and companions by a ruffian in scarlet, with a sin-blackened soul, 
never to see that home again : for in a short hour or two he had 
crushed out the life of his little victim, and left her, so lately 
blooming with life and health, and revelling in all the wild alan- 
don and joyous spirits of a child, a mutilated corpse, which told 
too well the sad and sickening story of the struggle which heralded 
her entrance to another and a better world. 



CHAPTER III. 

OLLA PODRIDA. 

Many will doubtless think that " Olla Podrida" is an uncommonly 

odd title for a chapter of any book inCthe English language, until 

they learn that, in the land of the tjid, it names a dish savoury 

beyond expression, in which scraps of fish, flesh, and fowl mingle 

in appetizing contiguity. It is the patchwork of the cuisine, an 

omnium gatherum of edible delights, and, by a desperate stretch 

of imagination and fancy, may be compelled to figure forth the 

odds and ends of the present chapter, the last few rags and scraps 

of recollections which are lurking at the bottom of memory's 

wallet, which I must pull out and piece together to furnish the 

closing pages of these desultory notes and jottings about my 

native town. 

I find I have said nothing about the contribution that the 

churchyard of Kingsbridge can offer to any future collection of 

quaint epitaphs which some ardent admirer of such matters may 

henceforth cull from British burial grounds. The memorial to 

which I allude is cut on a headstone close to the chancel door, 

and runs as follows : — 

" Underneath Lieth the Body of Eobert, commonly called Bone Phillips, who 
died July 27th, 1793, Aged 65 years ; At whose request the following lines 
are here inserted. 

Here He I at the Chancel door ; 

Here lie I because I'm poor ; 

The farther in the more you'll pay 5 

Here lie I as warm as they." 

It seems that the said Eobert Phillips, so signally distinguished 



146 MYETLES AND ALOES. 

by the epithet " Bone/' was a drunken old vagabond, a cooper by 
trade, who strung together the above doggrel lines for his tomb- 
stone, and was so enamoured of his effusion that {teste Hawkins) 
" he was in the habit of repeating them to all ranks and degrees 
in his mendicant vagaries/' whether drunk or sober. What a 
social evil old Bone must have been ! what a dreary nuisance, 
both in his cups and away from his cups ! and how people who 
knew and dreaded what was coming must have "fled at his ap- 
proach down the nearest run to western or eastern backlet ! which 
last, by the way, is bordered by a leat, not the cleanest I have 
ever seen, in which the early stages of the manufacture of tripe 
used to be repulsively performed by a colossal woman, fatter than 
FalstafF, familiarly known as Mary Anne. 

It was always a matter of speculation with me as to who the 
strong-minded men and women could possibly be who devoured 
the intestinal dainties that came fresh from the fingers and watery 
laboratory of Mary Anne ; but I never wondered at the desire 
existing in the thirsty souls of the town for a local liquor known 
as " white ale," brewed in Kingsbridge and Kingsbridge only, I 
believe, the fame of which has not yet spread beyond the neigh- 
bouring towns and villages, although it was in vogue years before 
the dusky streams of Guinnesses stout and the sparkling bitters of 
Burton and Bass bubbled o'er the delighted palates of a drouthy 
world. It is good in summer, mixed with ginger beer, in equal 
parts; it is better in winter, mulled with eggs and sugar, and 
tuned with a full glass of old Jamaica rum : alone, without any 
qualifying additions, I cannot conscientiously recommend it, 
although it appears grateful to the dura ilia of boatmen, work- 
men, and porters, who loaf about on Lazy Bridge, hard by the 
Anchor, of whom one Tom Pepperell seems to be the head and 
chief, as swart and saucy as any of Murillo's gipsies, who will 
take you down the river whenever you wish to view the beauties 
of Kingsbridge from the water, for hire duly agreed on, and 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 147 

throw in a wonderful deal of talk, gratis, to enliven the voyage. 
A tithe is paid to the rector of Dodbrooke on all white ale brewed 
in the parish. It takes its peculiar taste and colour from the 
introduction of an ingredient called " grout," a secret compound 
known only to the Randall family, who manufacture the mixture 
for the use of the brewers. 

The consumption of white ale must have been considerable in 
the days when* the scarlet coats of the old Volunteers were to be 
seen among the more sober hues of civilian costume in the town 
of Kingsbridge. The barracks in which our gallant grandfathers 
were lodged were on High-house estate. A stroll over Dodbrooke 
Quay, past the lime kilns and Winsor Lodge, will bring us to a 
large gate between two square pillars of masonry, on the left side 
of the road, through which we obtain access to a field, bordered 
on the west side by a belt of firs, growing on a steep cliff, which 
the waters of the estuary washed some forty or fifty years ago, 
before the marshes were reclaimed, the new road made, and the 
quays, that edge the road side, built. On the ridge at the other 
end of this field were the Kingsbridge barracks, famous for fleas, 
according to the account of an old gentleman of Newton Abbot, 
who suffered persecution from the probes of these insects while 
on service there in the days of his youth. The part which formed 
the officers' mess-room and hospital still remains, a black weather- 
boarded building looking towards the river and the shipwrights' 
yard. Three stone walls, capped with a slate roof, away to the 
north of this fragment of the old barracks, formed a retreat for a 
piece of ordnance, which used to fling its iron food across the 
water with an angry roar at a mark in the quarry opposite, before 
which a small cluster of houses now stands, called Tacket Wood. 
The sullen boom of the death-dealing guns of the ships that 
fought the first sea fight in the struggle that commenced 
between England and Erance in 1793 might have been heard 
on this very hill : nay, a Kingsbridge man — the grandfather of 



148 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

Mr. Edwards, now resident at Addlehole — saw this battle from 
Prawle Point; and doubtless, as his eye kindled, and his blood 
swept through his veins in quickened rout, he longed, as any 
Englishman would long, to be in the midst of the fury of the 
fray. He saw the Nymph, of 36 guns, commanded by Captain 
Edward Pellew (afterwards Yiscount Exmouth), slowly beating 
up channel on the morning of June 18th, 1793, a few miles to 
the south-west of the Start. He saw the English frigate at six 
a.m. fall in with a Erench ship of war, which proved to be the 
Cleopdtre, and, a little later, a burst of white smoke from the 
portholes of the latter, which announced that the action had com- 
menced. A furious cannonade followed, which was kept up until 
seven o'clock by both vessels, when the Nymph was skilfully laid 
alongside of her opponent; and in ten minutes from that time 
every Erenchman was driven from the decks of the Cleopdtre by 
the irresistible rush of the sailors of Pellew, who had thus gal- 
lantly won the first-fruits of the long series of naval engagements 
which immediately followed. 

There were strange old fellows in authority among the Volun- 
teers of olden time, and not the least singular amongst them was 
a captain of hosts, known throughout the length and breadth of 
South Devon as " Cappen Pridgeon," who commanded a company 
raised in these parts. One day, while at a sham fight near Stan- 
borough, the gallant captain's company was ordered to retreat. 
"Baytrait," cried the indignant captain, "it shall never be said 
in Dodbrooke market that Cappen Pridgeon raytraited. Charge 
bagginets, my men!" and his men did "charge bagginets," to the 
wrath of the veteran conducting the field operations of the day, 
and the utter discomfiture of the advancing foe, who fled in broken 
ranks before the determined onslaught of Pridgeon's invincibles. 

The same captain was addicted to field sports, and prone to 
enter the mess-room in dirty boots, as indeed were the majority 
of his brother officers. A rule was passed inflicting a fine of a 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 149 

bottle of wine on the son of Mars who should venture to come to 
mess in boots that knew not Day and Martin. One day dinner 
had just been placed on table, and Captain Pridgeon had just 
returned to his quarters from a bout at snipe shooting. To change 
his boots was to lose his dinner, or the best part of it ; to enter 
as he was must cost him a bottle of wine. While halting between 
two opinions a brilliant thought struck him : the rule only pro- 
vided that boots should be clean. Seizing a bucket of water 
from the grasp of a soldier passing by, he deliberately plunged 
first one foot and then the other into the contents of the pail, 
washing his boots free from every particle of mud and dirt, and 
then hastened up the mess-room to his accustomed place with a 
squishy-squashy tramp, leaving every footstep clearly defined in 
aqua-tint on the carpetless floor. " A fine for Cappen Pridgeon ! " 
echoed round the room, " Here's Cappen Pridgeon with dirty 
boots again ! " " No ! no ! " replied the astute centurion, " don't 
think you be gwain to catch Cappen Pridgeon ; my boots be clane 
anyhow, though they bain't sheeney ! " which last word, it must 
be observed for the benefit of the uninitiated, was the word which 
did duty for the term " shiny " in the worthy Devonshire captain's 
vocabulary. 

There is much in connexion with Kingsbridge left unsaid, on 
which I could dwell with the greatest pleasure : some things I 
cannot even touch on; others must be dismissed with scanty 
notice, that I may come to an end within the space I am allowed 
to fill. It is not for me to glorify once more the pious and 
charitable men, the Aclands, the Petres, the Gyes (no connexion 
whatever of the hero of the Gunpowder Plot) who have assigned 
monies for the relief of our poorer brethren in Kingsbridge and 
Dodbrooke for ever, as long as our " ever " shall last. I cannot 
stay to speak of the feoffee property, and the cat-and-dog strug- 
gles between churchmen and dissenters for the appropriation of 
these little loaves and fishes. I have no room to tell you how 



150 MYRTLES AND ALOES. 

Lackington, the great bookseller of Finsbury Square, began to 
build his fortune and his prosperous house on the foundation of 
a ten-pound note borrowed in Kingsbridge when he first began to 
struggle up the ladder of worldly renown. I can scarcely mention 
the weekly market on Saturdays, and the annual fair held on July 
20th (St. Margaret's Day) or the Thursday immediately succeed- 
ing, which languishes through Friday, and culminates in drunk- 
enness and riot on Saturday night. 

The fair is now held to little purpose, though it was useful 
enough in days gone by, when our grandmothers and their 
grandmothers before them repaired to the "Chepe House" of 
Kingsbridge once a-year to buy broadcloth for the upper and 
nether casings of their husbands and olive branches of the male 
kind, with dome and crockery sufficient to stand a twelvemonth's 
smash, and wares and merchandise of every description enough to 
last till St. Margaret's Day came round again. Then Fore Street 
was so tightly packed with people that, to speak in slightly exag- 
gerative terms, you might have walked from top to bottom on the 
heads of the men and women therein assembled. Shows and 
exhibitions of all sorts then gladdened the hearts of pleasure- 
seekers old and young. Now the fair is at its last gasp : Cheap 
Jack, certainly, bellows from his cart well filled with matters made 
to sell, like Peter Pindar's razors, to a small but admiring girdle 
of gaping clowns ; the fat girl waddles dolefully across her cara- 
van ; Toby, the learned porker, wistfully displays the modicum of 
knowledge he has painfully acquired under the hard discipline of 
the knotted lash and shin-bruising kicks of his brutal master; 
peepshows exhibit the last murder, and glut the eyes of wonder- 
ing children with marvellous conceptions of the painter's pencil. 
But it is time to put an extinguisher over all save the buying and 
selling of the first day, and the festive dinners, and rivers of wine 
and punch and grog flowing at that season in every house for 
guests great and small, bidden or unbidden. 



MYRTLES AND ALOES. 151 

Ah ! old friends, old fellow townsmen ! a long pull, a strong 
pull, and a pull altogether, and you will pull your picturesque 
little town into the front rank. What is there that God and 
nature has not given you ? What part of England can challenge 
you with respect to climate, mild and balmy as that of Southern 
France or the shores of Northern Italy ? You are planted in a 
situation protected from every inclement wind and biting blast by 
the hills that surround you : pleasant walks are yours, and easy 
access to the bright waters of laughing ocean : you have every 
advantage that clime and position can command, and it rests with 
yourselves alone to decide what youjwiU become. 

Look at your town and see how much you have done for your- 
selves already: in no place is there less chance of getting aid from 
without for any project of improvement, in no place is more readi- 
ness and enthusiasm shewn to promote any undertaking that may 
prove of benefit and advantage to the common weal. Look at 
the churches and chapels re-built, altered, improved, beautified, 
and adorned, within the last few years. Look at the home-built 
clipper vessels that skim the seas, the Kingsbridge Packet, the 
little Queen : all offspring of the energy and enterprise of the 
inhabitants of Kingsbridge and the neighbourhood. Look at 
Eore Street, paved and lighted in a style inferior to no town in 
England; the shops, superior to any which may be found in 
towns of similar size ; the frontage of the houses, with which the 
careful skill of "Roger Elliott and Joseph Pulliblank have beautified 
the streets. See the very contents of the various shops, and the 
genial gleam of prosperity and content that is reflected from the 
faces of their owners. Where can you be supplied with any and 
every want better than in Kingsbridge? Where will you find 
butchers, bakers, brewers, vintners, tailors, drapers, druggists, 
grocers, booksellers, coal merchants, upholsterers, ironmongers, 
milliners, hatters — in short, followers of pretty nearly every known 
trade and calling under the sun, better able to supply the wants 



152 MYRTLES AND ALOES. k / . _ / 

of the body and the longings of the mind than those who flourish 
in Kingsbridge ? You can even boast of supporting that which 
is fast becoming a necessary of life to every Englishman, a cheap 
newspaper; for do not innumerable copies of the Kingsbridge 
Gazette pour weekly from the press and office of Mr. G. P. 
Friend, editor, printer, and proprietor of the same, like three 
single gentlemen rolled into one, of whom I could with truth, 
sincerity, and pleasure, say much more, but that I fear his edito- 
rial scissors would mutilate this part of my MS. 

But it is useless for me to enumerate all you have ; strangers 
that come to you will soon find it all out for themselves : they 
will see that your town is well paved, well lighted, well managed, 
well supplied ; that you have a good literary society for mutual 
improvement, an excellent trade in corn, cattle, and malt, and 
no end of etceteras. But — ah ! but — you must have a railroad 
direct from the South Devon Bail way to Kingsbridge, spite of all 
the Modbury men may say to the contrary : the beautiful building 
sites in the immediate vicinity of the town should be laid out 
forthwith, and built on as soon as possible. Your sites for build- 
ing are unequalled ; stone, slate, and timber are cheap enough ; 
and there is every facility for water carriage for building material ; 
and you had better get hold of a few builders without delay who 
have, or can find, the wherewithal to play ducks and drakes for a 
while, or be prepared to go directly into the same interesting and 
speculative game yourselves. Be true to yourselves and to your 
own interests, and a prettier, more prosperous, more pleasant spot 
shall not exist in the earth-encircling realms of Her Majesty 
the Queen than 



G. P. FBIEND, PRINTER, GAZETTE OFFICE, KINGSBBIDGE. 



